Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil when she was four. It punctured her cheek and part of it went into her brain, above the right eye.Oh, hell! They didn't even take it all out. She's still got pencil in her head.
The 59-year-old has suffered headaches and nosebleeds for most of her life.
Surgeons in Berlin were able to remove most of the pencil in a two-hour operation, but a 2cm section was so embedded it was impossible to remove....
"The central part of the foreign body was encapsulated in soft tissue and was not causing the patient any harm, so it was safe to leave it"....
Quite aside from the pain and other damage, what about the very idea that you have a pencil in your head? I once had an embroidery needle completely inside my foot -- don't ask... it involved dancing barefoot on an old hardwood floor -- and the idea was terribly upsetting. And that was only for one evening. I can't imagine how much it would affect a person's life to have a pencil in the head for 55 years.
AND: From a tip in the comments...
As they say: "The Simpsons" got there first.
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18 comments:
Unwanted foreign bodies invading the sanctity of the body without permission.
For me it was a piece of metal embedded in the iris.
OW! Ooooh!!! Geee!!! Sympathetic phantom pain syndrome strikes!!!
I needed that like I needed a hole in the...
well, nevermind.
Eek! I have a bit of pencil lead in my upper thigh that I took on in elementary school, and THAT bothers me to no end. I can't imagine.
OUCH! The closest I can come to that is that, while bounding down some stairs at my high school when I was a sophomore, I accidentally drove pencil lead into my right hand. It's still there, visible beneath the surface of the skin. But it's never caused me pain...except, of course, for the initial puncture.
Of course, in the strange childhood injury department, there was the thrown softball bat that raised a knot on my forehead when I was in the fourth grade. It's still there. The long-term damage associated with that is probably obvious to anyone who reads my comments here or my blog.
At the time, it bounced off my head and hit another kid, raising a knot on him as well. (Pat Murphy was really excited about making that hit! That's why he threw the bat so hard, I guess.)
I sustained a blackened left eye. As that faded, the right eye followed suit. As it was healing, the left eye went black again.
How on earth did you drive an embroidery needle into your foot?
Mark Daniels
"How on earth did you drive an embroidery needle into your foot?"
I didn't. Didn't even have a car at the time. Took a cab to New York Hospital.
If you want to really have a shudder, look at a biography of proto-serial killer Albert Howard Fish, who was a masochist who used to thrust needles into his body, specifically his privates. X-rays exist of dozens of needles lodged in the psycho's body.
I have two 5 inch metal pins in my right hip. It doesn't bother me. I wonder if only things which penetrate the flesh from the outside bother people?
Hmm, after thinking about the naughty implications of that last sentence and comparing them to my own experiences, I'd have to say no to that theory as well.
I would think that the worst part of having a pencil stuck in your brain are those times when you need to write something down, and you can't find anything to write with. You know you have a pencil nearby, you just can't quite get to it...
Very good, AA! It must have been a fantastic thing for everyone to see you turn into a hospital.
I had the tip of a pencil in my thigh for years. Seems gone now. Like Mark Daniels, I have a knot on my head that persisted from childhood... which could explain a lot, really.
55 years is even more years than Homer Simpson had the pencil in his brain. When the doctor removed it, his IQ increased significantly, but by the end of the show, he needed to get his life back to normal, so they pushed it back up his nose. As I recall, gauging how far to push it in was an issue, so when he expressed an interest in NASCAR, they backed it out just a hair.
Back in junior high school, some guys were jousting or wrestling or something on piggyback, and one guy didn't check his mount's back pocket for pencils before dismounting... Yes, it was sharp, and had no trouble piercing those skin-tight Levis everybody wore. Owwwww...
That might have been a crayon in Homer's brain. Details, details. I wonder what's in my brain these days.
Okay, one more pointless Comment here, since this isn't the Active Moonbat Thread today, anyway...
Homer gets Moe to replace the crayon, and it seems to be Sports Fans and Extended Warranty Purchasers that get tweaked, not NASCAR people, so humble apologies to all you guys with stylized integer decals on your pickup trucks.
Dialogue:
Moe: Alright, tell me when I hit the sweet spot.
Homer: Deeper, you pusillanimous pilsner pusher!
Moe: Alright, alright.
(With a small hammer and chisel, he taps the crayon further up Homer's nose.)
Homer: De-fense! Woof-woof! De-fense! Woof-woof!
Moe: Eh, that's pretty dumb. But, uh...
(He taps once more)
Homer: Extended warranty? How can I lose?
Moe: Perfect.
Hazy, thanks. Check the update.
While You Were Sleeping
Family of comatose Peter Callahan gathered at his bedside in hospital room:
Lucy (Sandra Bullock):Peter...h-has one testicle.
Jack (Bill Pullman): No way.
Lucy: Way. About a month ago, there was an accident, and he was playing basketball, and his friend had a pencil in his... back pocket.
Mary Callahan (Monica Keene): Eeeww.
Jack: Maybe, um....
Father callahan (Peter Boyle):Oh, no.
Jack:Well, somebody's gotta look.
Father: Don't look at me.
Jack: No...
Mother Callahan (Micole Mercurio):
Yeah, maybe, uh...
Jack: Listen, it's not my, uh, uh....
Mother Callahan: Okay, I'm his mother.
Mary Callahan (Monica Keena):Oh, Ma, Oooooh.
Scene cuts to family entering elevator, turning and facing out the door:
Grandma Elsie (Glynis Johns):Well, look at the bright side.
He's got more room in his Jockey shorts.
Oh Hell, shes'still got a pencil in her head lol
Yuck. I don't even want to "store" one behind my ear anymore. And it was so convenient, too.
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