Posted on
February 22, 2010 by
Bizarre Medical News
At 15 years old, Dede Koswara was learning to be a fisherman. He was learning how to build things. He was a happy boy living in Indonesia. Then he cut his knee. It was all downhill from there.
His knee took a long time to heal, and a wart formed where the abrasion used to be. Then more warts formed around it. He went on with his life, became a fisherman and builder, got married, had a couple of kids. But his problem got worse and worse. More warts grew on top of even more warts, and over the course of several years, despite treatment from local doctors, Dede was overrun with warts that looked like tree bark, earning him the nickname “The Tree Man.”
Dede lived for 20 years with this condition, which is basically an HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) infection that raged out of control because of Dede’s compromised immune system. When American doctors first started treated Dede they assumed that he had AIDS – for what else could compromise Dede’s immune system so? Tests showed that Dede does not have AIDS, so his immuno deficiency is a mystery.
Dede’s growths weren’t painful, unless they get tangled up or hung up on something. But they just kept growing – and bugs nested in the bark-like tangle of what used to look like feet. His hands got so bad that he couldn’t feed himself. He can’t touch his children. His condition is not contagious – in fact nobody in his family has gotten a single wart – but the growths are so rough and hard that he cannot experience tactile sensation through them.
So an American dermatologist named Anthony Gaspari worked with the Indonesian government to get some treatment for Dede. In January of 2008, Dede underwent the first of what will be 8 surgeries to try to remove the 4-12 pounds of warts on his slight 100-pound frame. After the first 4 surgeries, Dede was able to hold a pen in his hand and write. He was able to hold a fork, and at least the outline of his feet were visible.
Unfortunately, the doctors don’t see a full recovery in Dede’s future. Gaspari hopes to get Dede a Visa and get him over to the United States for further testing to see if they can identify and treat Dede’s immune disorder, which is truly the root of all his trouble. If they can fix his immune system, his body will fight off the HPV, and he won’t grow any more warts.
An ABCNews article says that doctors are skeptical that Dede will ever be cured. Even with the surgeries, he still has a solid covering of warts.
Dede hopes someday to be cured enough to find a nice woman to fall in love with and marry. His first wife, the mother of his children, left him when his growths raged out of control.
Posted on
February 15, 2010 by
Bizarre Medical News
What do Gottlieb Burckhardt, Egas Moniz, and Walter Freeman have in common? Other than the fact that I had never heard of them before researching this topic, it turns out that they were all dudes who lobotomized their patients.
A lobotomy is a brain surgery that cuts the connectors between the front bits and the back bits of the brain. European doctors started performing the procedure on mental patients in the early 20th century, along with other radical therapies for extreme mental illness and insanity. Other procedures included electroshock (or electroconvulsive) therapy, drug-induced deep sleep therapy, and more.
I am not, by any means, denouncing the entire psychiatric community for coming up with risky, damaging, and invasive radical treatments to try out on helpless mental patients. Nope. Not me. Anyway…
Gottlieb Burckhardt was a psychiatrist in the late 1800’s and he performed lobotomies on six patients with varied diagnoses. Two of the patients simply became more subdued, one died shortly after surgery, two were unaffected altogether, and one seemed to improve but then later committed suicide.
Egas Moniz was a Portuguese neurologist changed the surgery a bit – he drilled holes into the heads and injected alcohol to kill the frontal lobes. I guess that didn’t work, because he came up with a tool called a leucotome that was really just a wire loop that scrambled stuff around in the patient’s heads. This work, which took place in the mid-thirties, had better success rates than one would expect, earned Moniz the 1949 Nobel Prize for medicine.
Walter Freeman studied Moniz’s work and along with a guy named James Watts altered the practice and created their own procedure. Called the Freeman-Watts procedure, they would drill into the scalp, and then later would go in through the eye socket.
1949 was the big year for lobotomies, with more than 18608 lobotomies taking place in the United States by 1951. JFK’s sister had a lobotomy when she was 23 and she was never OK after that. Same with Tennessee Williams’ sister Rose. Other people, like Howard Dully and Alys Robi turned out just fine, but at the same time lots of people died.
Posted on
February 08, 2010 by
Bizarre Medical News
Nobody really knows why they occur, but every now and then people get a weird little bump on their wrist or ankle that feels sort of like a swollen node, but it’s not. It’s a cyst, it’s a Ganglion Cyst, also called a “Bible Bump.”
Wikipedia says that it’s likely a valve problem with the joint – fluid can get out of the joint but it can’t get back in, forming the cyst. They say the fluid inside is like synovial fluid (like egg yolk), but it’s a little thicker.
The cysts mainly appear on the wrist; both the top side of the wrist and the underside. I actually have one right now, which is what led me to the research and this subsequent post. I want it to go away, but since it doesn’t hurt I don’t want to go to any extreme measures to remove it.
“Bible Bump.” Why is it called that? Legend has it that people used to used to use the largest book in their house (usually the family Bible) to bash the cyst to get rid of it. See?
The word “ganglion” means a mass of tissues. I guess a joint is a mass of tissues, so to have a cyst on it would make the name make sense.
Incidentally, there are lots of “home remedy” suggestions out there, mostly involving different plants and herbs (Hong Hua, Sutherlandia frutescens, Job’s tears, etc.) and hitting the cyst with different heavy instruments (books, coffee mugs, rubber mallets). I think I’ll just leave mine alone for now.
Weird medical diseases, strange medical facts and bizarre human conditions, you will find your fill of the odd medical news here. Photo header credit: by brian cors
