A 21-year-old woman has lost mobility in her right arm following a botched blood donation in which a nurse allegedly drew blood from one of her arteries instead of a vein.

Gabriela Ekman, of Ontario, Canada, had just turned 17 when she decided to donate blood for the first time in her life. She hoped it would make a difference, maybe even save someone’s life, but she had no idea it would actually change her life for the worse. When she went to a blood drive hosted by Canadian Blood Services four years ago, she didn’t know what to expect, but when the the phlebotomist who drew her blood let out a “whoops” when she stung her arm with a needle, she knew something wasn’t right. But she didn’t say anything, not even when the staff commented on how oxygenated her blood seemed, an indication that it may have come from an artery, instead of a vein. By the time she realized something was definitely wrong, it was too late…

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An Egyptian fisherman nearly lost his life after one of his catches got stuck in his windpipe, making it almost impossible for him to breathe or retrieve the fish.

Earlier this month, doctors at the emergency room of a hospital in Beni Suef, Egypt, were shocked to discover that a patient who had been brought in with symptoms like shortness of breath and speaking difficulties, had a fish stuck in his throat. Upon examining the man, they noticed that the fish was stuck at the entrance to the trachea, leaving just enough space for a little air to get through and prevent the man from suffocating before even reaching the hospital.

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A Colorado man had to be taken to the emergency room after suffering a rare allergic reaction to cold after stepping out of the shower into a cold shower.

Reported last month in the Journal of Emergency Medicine, the strange case of an unnamed 34-year-old man from Colorado who developed a serious allergic reaction to cold temperatures has left many medical experts scratching their heads. The man’s family allegedly found him on the floor after he collapsed soon after stepping out of the shower. He was struggling to breathe, his skin was covered in hives and he had very low blood pressure. When paramedics arrived, they diagnosed him with a life-threatening, whole-body allergic reaction known as “anaphylaxis”.

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Zolpidem is a sedative from the imidazopyridine class of drugs that is most commonly used to help people fall asleep faster. But, in rare cases, this common drug can actually restore function to damaged brains.

There is a reason why zolpidem is sometimes referred to as the “Lazarus Drug”. If you give this pill to someone with brain damage, in 5% to 6% of cases something miraculous happens. In most cases, the changes are minor. People’s speech improves slightly, the frequency of muscle spasms is reduced, they have less difficulty moving, but in some rare cases, a pill can even bring people back from vegetative states, allowing them speak and move as they did before suffering brain damage. The problem is that these positive effects are gone as soon as the drug wears off, and scientists have yet to discover why some patients with brain damage react this way to zolpidem.

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The Brigham Young University in Idaho has launched an investigation into claims that some of its students are intentionally trying to get infected with SARS-CoV-2, to then sell their antibody plasma for cash.

Officials at Brigham Young University, which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, strongly condemned the the alleged behavior of its students and announced its decision to suspend anyone caught attempting to contract the virus on purpose. The university is currently investigating incidents on campus, and has urged students not to put themselves and others at risk for financial risks, because the risk is not worth the reward.

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Can you imagine looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person staring back at you. That’s what Lena, a 29-year-old Russian woman suffering from prosopagnosia, a rare condition that makes it impossible to recognize faces, including her own.

Lena Ash only learned that she was suffering from prosopagnosia last year. Before that, she had always tried to convince herself that she wasn’t simply slower than other people. Even as a child, Lena had problems recognizing faces, and talking to her parents about it didn’t really help. She doesn’t blame them for it, as they didn’t even know such a condition existed, and it’s not like they could simply google her symptoms back then. Not even the neurologists she went to for her headaches, migraines, low blood pressure and nausea could figure out the cause of her health problems, and this all made her feel ashamed of herself.

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A 45-year-old Chinese man reportedly suffered a heart attack after getting extremely upset while helping his son with his math homework.

The man, surnamed Liu, had been helping his Year 3 son with homework since school started last month, but over the past two weeks he had started experiencing a mild pain in his chest whenever he got frustrated with the boy. Things got really bad on Sunday, when Liu became really upset after repeating the same math question to his son three times, who was struggling to find the answer. At one point he started experiencing sharp chest pain and shortness of breath, and eventually passed out. Liu later woke up and thought medical attention at the Shenzhen Third People’s Hospital, where he learned that he had suffered a heart attack.

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Blue eyes are a rare sight in Indonesia, a country where the vast majority of the population has dark hair and dark eyes, but some members of an indigenous tribe have the most stunning blue eyes, because of a rare condition known as Waardenburg Syndrome.

Believed to affect about 1 in 42,000 people, Waardenburg Syndrome is characterized by some degree of hearing loss and pigmentation deficiencies, which can include bright blue eyes (or one blue eye and one black/brown eye). It is caused by mutations in any of several genes that affect the operation of neural crest cells in embryonic development. The visual effect of Waardenburg Syndrome is particularly impressive in ethnic groups where blue eyes are a rarity, as you can see in the photos of members of the Buton tribe taken by Indonesian geologist and amateur photographer Korchnoi Pasaribu.

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A 15-year-old Brazilian girl has baffled doctors after allegedly crying blood from her eyes for over a week, for reasons that doctors cannot understand.

The girl, identified only Doris, started feeling sick on September 12, and her mother took her to a hospital in her home city of Sao Paolo. She complained of pain in her abdomen and doctors diagnosed her with kidney stones. She was given medication for the pain and was sent home shortly after. However, on Sunday morning she was again rushed to the emergency room with blood coming out of one eye. Doctors examined Doris, but couldn’t determine the cause of the blood tears, and since she reported no pain or discomfort, she was once again sent home.

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While the rest of the world struggles to find a cure or even a treatment for Covid-19, Indonesia’s Agriculture Ministry  claims to have found a solution – wearing a eucalyptus necklace developed by one of its agencies.

The so-called “antivirus necklace” was developed by Balitbangtan, the Agriculture Ministry’s Health Research and Development Agency, and will go into mass-production next month. According to minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo, the necklace was made using a species of eucalyptus that can kill the novel coronavirus. Simply wearing the accessory for 15 minutes allegedly kills 42 percent of coronavirus, while upping the time to 30 minutes doubles its effectiveness. The eucalyptus necklace is just one of a whole line of all-natural products designed to prevent or treat Covid-19.

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Scientists at Johns Hopkins University recently reported the strange case of a man’s whose rare degenerative brain disease left him unable to distinguish basic numbers from 2 to 9.

After studying an engineering geologist diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disease called corticobasal syndrome for eight years, researchers published a study which they claim suggests that a brain response to a picture or a word does not necessarily mean that person is aware of it. The protagonist of their research had suffered neurological damage to such an extent that he could not distinguish or reproduce numbers between 2 and 9, nor pictures or words with such digits embedded in them. And yet, electroencephalography (EEG) results showed that his brain was able to properly identify all pictures and words, even id he wasn’t aware of it.

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A 40-year-old man in China reportedly suffered three bladder tears after drinking ten beers and then holding pee in for a shocking 18 hours.

Earlier this month, the man, referred to only as Mr. Hu, had reportedly consumed 10 beers during a night on the town, before coming home and crashing into an inebriated sleep. Somehow he never woke up to urinate after drinking that many beers. He just went to sleep and didn’t empty his bladder once for a total of 18 hours, which doctors later explained could be tied to alcohol’s capacity to suppress the nervous system. It is possible that Hu just didn’t feel the sensation of needing to empty his bladder while he slept. That all changed when he woke up, though.

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A 40-year-old Indian man tragically lost his life recently after his visiting family allegedly unplugged the ventilator keeping him alive in order to plug in an air cooler, after the hospital turned on air conditioning to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The unnamed man was suspected to be suffering from COVID-19 and admitted to the ICU at Maharao Bhim Singh (MBS) Hospital in Rajasthan, India, on June 13. Two days later, after another patient there tested positive for the virus, he was moved to an isolation ward as a safety precaution. That same day, the man’s family came to visit, and because it was extremely hot in the Kota district of Rajasthan (41 degrees Celsius), they brought an electrical air cooler. Under normal circumstances, the hospital’s air conditioning would have made the air cooler redundant, but because of the Covid-19 threat, the air conditioning system had been turned off to stop the spread of the virus.

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Emil Egan was born and raised in Essex, United Kingdom and speaks no foreign language, but hearing her speak you could swear she is a Russian immigrant or tourist, because of her Eastern European accent. But the funny thing is that she sometimes sounds French, Italian or even Polish, depending on how tire she is.

31-year-old Emily’s life changed dramatically in January, when a mysterious condition left her unable to speak for two months. She had complained about headaches for two weeks before one day developing a deeper voice out of the blue. Her colleagues at a children’s home she was managing in Bournemouth then noticed that her speech had become slow and slurred, both indicators of a stroke. By the time she was rushed to the hospital Emily had lost her ability to speak completely, but after running some tests, doctors ruled out the strike, instead blaming her voice loss on some sort of brain injury.

After spending three weeks in the hospital, Emily Egan was still unable to speak and relied solely on basic sign language she had picked up at work and a text-to-speech app on her phone to communicate. Emily was discharged to a neurologist who encouraged her to go on a vacation in Thailand she and her partner Bradleigh had already booked, and to try and relax as much as possible. She did just that and a few days into the vacation, she started to speak again.

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A 26-year-old Chinese man was recently labeled Wuhan’s fattest person after gaining a whopping 100 kilograms during the city’s five-month lockdown.

The man, referred to only as Zhou, to protect his privacy, wasn’t exactly fir before the coronavirus started wreaking havoc in Wuhan, prompting the authorities to impose a strict lockdown. But at least he kept his weight in check, worked at a local cafe and lead a relatively normal lifestyle. But that all changed when Zhou started spending most of his time indoor. Unable to burn off any calories, he started gaining weight, and in a few months’ time he had ballooned to 616 pounds (280 kilograms), over 200 pounds more than he weighed before the Covid-19 epidemic.

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