20 Bizarre Medical Stories Of 2016, From The 80-Pound Scrotum To A Lifesaving Potato Chip
American politics has dominated a lot of the news for the past year, but there was much more to 2016 than the presidential election — there were loads of bizarre medical stories that should not be forgotten. Let’s take a moment to reflect on the mindblowing events of the year.
Twins who aren’t twins
A woman with a rare condition that caused her to continue ovulating after she became pregnant conceived a second child 10 days after the first one, then delivered them at the same time. The sperm from her husband that created the second fetus came over at the same time as the first fertilization — it had survived inside her body that entire time.
Order sperm on your phone
The enormous London Sperm Bank now has an app that lets prospective parents choose a sperm donor on their phones. It works a little like a dating app in that it filters potential donors based on factors like eye color and education level.
Spider bites penis twice
An Australian man was bitten on his penis twice this year, both times by a venomous spider and roughly in the same place. He had been in a portable toilet at a work site.
A new accent
An American Southern woman getting surgery for an overbite woke up with a British accent. Foreign accent syndrome is a real but rare condition that is usually caused by neurological damage.
Fighting to eat placenta
A woman went to court to win the right to eat her own placenta after giving birth to her baby. The hospital defines placenta as medical waste, hence the issue in allowing her to turn it into a daily supplement like a multivitamin.
The unborn
A 15 year old hospitalized for stomach cramps found out his unborn twin was still living inside him. The fetus, which was almost fully formed, was removed.
70-year-old mom
An elderly married couple, after years of trying to have a baby, turned to in-vitro fertilization and finally conceived. The 70-year-old mother gave birth to her first child. Her husband was 79.
Ghost pepper injury
An eating challenge involving the intensely hot ghost pepper ripped a hole in a man’s throat that caused the food to leak out into the area around his left lung, which then collapsed. He survived.
Kindergarten heroin
A 5-year-old boy brought 30 packs of heroin to school in his lunch box. The New Jersey kindergartener tested negative for drugs.
Hickey blood clot
A 17-year-old boy got a hickey from his older girlfriend that caused a blood clot that then traveled to his brain and induced a stroke. It is not the first time a hickey caused a serious blood clot either.
Pole dancing is real labor
A pregnant woman in labor recorded a video of herself pole dancing between contractions. The woman is a pole dancing instructor.
His weight in blood
A weightlifter broke his own world record but at the same time also broke some blood vessels in his head and collapsed. He survived the ordeal.
Heartless
A man has a new heart after living for more than 500 days without one. He had been attached to a portable device that pumped his blood for him.
80-pound scrotum
Following a surgery, a man’s scrotum swelled to 80 pounds, and measured more than 4 feet in diameter. He is now sterile.
Living hand-foot-mouth in college
A Florida college saw an outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease, a common childhood viral illness. It is highly contagious and comes with mouth sores and blisters on the hands and feet.
Lifesaving potato chip
A woman who ate potato chips every day of her life went to the doctor after one hurt her throat. The doctor found cancer, so the errant chip may have saved her life.
Five babies for price of one
A woman in India was expecting to have one baby but ended up delivering five. It is believed to be the first time a woman in that specific region of her country birthed quintuplets naturally.
Milk in the raw
Lawmakers celebrated the freedom to drink unpasteurized milk by downing glasses of raw milk, only to become violently sick. They claimed it was a coincidence.
Unfaithful illness
A cyst in a woman’s brain caused her to become paranoid, thinking her husband was cheating on her and her daughter was flunking school. Doctors cannot safely remove the cyst and instead put her on anti-psychotics.
Brain sanitizer
Some young people are getting sick from trying to get drunk using hand sanitizer. In Sweden there were cases of teens mixing it with orange juice to make their own screwdrivers.
See also: 5 Most Amazing Surgeries This Year
