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A Chinese man who recently turned up at a hospital in Yunnan Province
with a swollen eyelid and excruciating headache was shocked to learn
that his condition was caused by several pieces of wood stuck in his
brain.
The 41-year-old man, surnamed Zhou, told doctors that he first realized
something was wrong about two months ago, when an old scan on his right
eyelid became swollen and his occasional headaches started getting
worse. Unable to deal with the pain, he finally went to the First
People’s Hospital in Yunnan Province for treatment, where a computerized
tomography scan revealed that he had several pieces of wood with a
combined length of 11 cm stuck in his brain. Asked how on Earth he had
ended up with so much would deep inside his skull, Zhou recalled an
accident that had occurred half a decade prior.
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Zhou told doctors that five years ago, while working in the woods in
Mojiang County, he tripped and fell face first into a thick tree branch
that pierced his right eyelid and entered his eye socket. He maintained
his composure, pulling out the stuck branch with his bare hand and then
stopping the bleeding. Because he didn’t experience any vision problems
and, most importantly, because he lacked the money, he didn’t go to a
hospital, instead letting the wound heal by itself.
The 41-year-old said that he occasionally experienced sharp pain and
headaches after his accident, but never really thought much of it.
However, it turns out the problem was much more serious than he
originally thought, as the branch that pierced his eyelid penetrated
deep into his brain and broke into several small pieces that remained
there after he pulled it out. Luckily for him, those wood pieces didn’t
hit any important blood vessels or nerves but they had migrated all the
way to his cerebellum and had recently become infected, which caused the
man’s headaches to worsen.
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Doctors told Zhou that he needed emergency surgery, but he and his wife
were reluctant to give their consent because they feared the operation
could cause him to go blind, and because they didn’t have money for the
treatment anyway. Understanding the situation, a professional medical
team of neurosurgeons and ophthalmologists assured the couple that they
would do everything in their power to solve the problem without causing
any damage to Zhou’s brain, and devised a treatment plan that they could
afford.
Fortunately for Zhou, the operation was a success. Doctors extracted
several pieces of wood from his brain some of which were only 5mm away
from vital points that, if affected, could have rendered him permanently
disabled or even killed him instantly. |