Another police blooper

A fat bulge may not be what it seem to be
Doctors Find Coins In Patient's Belly

BOSTON (AP) -- French doctors were taken aback when they discovered the reason for a patient's sore, swollen belly: He had swallowed around 350 coins - worth about $860 Cdn - along with assorted necklaces and needles.

The 62-year-old man came to the emergency room of Cholet General Hospital in western France in 2002. He had a history of major psychiatric illness, was suffering from stomach pain and could not eat or move his bowels. His family warned doctors that he sometimes swallowed coins, and a few had been removed from his stomach in past hospital visits.

Still, doctors were awed when they took an X-ray. They discovered an enormous opaque mass in his stomach that turned out to weigh 5.4 kilograms, as much as some bowling balls. It was so heavy it had forced his stomach down between his hips.

Five days after his arrival, doctors cut him open and removed his badly damaged stomach with its contents. He died 12 days later from complications.

One of his doctors, intensive care specialist Dr. Bruno Francois, said the patient had swallowed the coins - both French currency and later euros - over about a decade. His family tried to keep coins and jewelry away from him.

"When he was invited and came in some homes, he liked to steal coins and eat them," Francois said.

The case history of the French patient, whose name was withheld, was reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

The patient's rare condition is called pica, a compulsion to eat things not normally consumed as food. Its name comes from the Latin word for magpie, a bird thought to eat just about anything.

Pica can take the form of eating dirt, ashes, chalk, hair, soap, toothbrushes, burned matches and many other things. Francois once treated a patient who ate forks. Most such objects are small enough to pass on their own, but some must be removed by doctors.

The condition is perhaps best known in children and pregnant women but is also sometimes linked to psychiatric illness.

A few details of the Frenchman's case were presented Jan. 1 along with the X-ray - but no explanation of the stomach mass - as a challenge to New England Journal of Medicine readers in a fixture called A Medical Mystery.

Dr. Lindsey Baden, an editor at the journal, reported that 666 readers in 73 countries - mostly doctors or doctors-in-training - contacted the journal to try to solve the mystery. Almost 90 per cent settled on diagnoses consistent with pica, but only eight per cent correctly identified coins.

"This case serves as a reminder of important factors that should be considered in the care of patients who are mentally impaired," Baden wrote.

Another advantage of being fat
A 266 Pound Man Who Was Shot In The Stomach Was Saved By His Rolls Of Fat

Chilean doctors say a 266 pound man who was shot in the stomach was saved by his rolls of fat.

They say the bullet lodged in the man's fat and did not damage any vital organs. A thinner person would have been killed immediately.

A hospital spokesperson in Santiago says the man's thick layer of fat acted in the same way as a bulletproof vest, taking the impact of the shot.

La Cuarta newspaper reports Omar Alegria Campos, who's 33, was driving his bus in the San Bernardo area of Santiago when an armed man got on and started robbing passengers.

Alegria stopped the bus and switched on his emergency lights to alert the police. He then tried to grab the man's weapon.

The attacker fired twice. The first bullet smashed the windscreen and the second lodged in the bus driver's stomach.

Despite the wound, Alegria managed to throw himself on top of the robber, stopping him from escaping.

A passing police patrol arrested the 29-year-old attacker. They also took Alegria to El Pino Hospital, where doctors extracted the bullet and sewed up the wound.

Where are the police ?
Mood:  surprised

Car thefts in the state is on the rise, but where are the law enforcers ?

No wonder we can't find the police where they are:

A trained police pursuit driver has been stood down for doing donuts in a dusty red paddock at a West Australian country fair.

 

See the video here:

 

 

And here's how you can handle if the police have nothing to do but hassle you at their free time:

 

 

 

end of the empire ?
Mood:  incredulous

 

 

 

 The dark knight announced that he has no longer interest in mounting a second empire strike attempt after 11 years..

 

 

 What is the real reason you ask ?

 Read below...

John Howard called Peter Costello into his office one day and said, "Peter I have a great idea! We are going to go all out to win the country voters."

"Good idea PM, how will we go about it?" said Peter.

"Well," said Howard, "we'll get ourselves one of those Driza Bone coats, some RM Williams boots, a stick and an Akubra hat, oh and a Blue Cattle dog. Then we'll really look the part. We'll go to a typical old outback country pub, we'll show we really enjoy the bush."

"Right," said Peter. Days later, all kitted out and with the requisite Blue heeler, they set off from Canberra in a westerly direction. Eventually they arrived at just the place they were looking for and found a typical outback pub. Walked in with the dog and up to the bar.

"G,day mate," said Howard, to the bartender, "two middies of your best beer."

"Good afternoon Prime Minister," said the bartender, "two middies of our best coming up".

Howard and Costello stood leaning on the bar drinking their beer and chatting, nodding now and again to those who came into the bar for a drink. The dog lay quietly at their feet.

All of a sudden, the door from the adjacent bar opened and in came a grizzled old stockman, complete with stockwhip. He walked up to the Cattle dog, lifted it's tail with the whip and looked underneath, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the other bar. A few moments later, in came another old stockman with his whip. He walked up to the dog, lifted it's tail, looked underneath, scratched his head and went back to the other bar. Over the course of the next hour or so, another four or five stockman came in, lifted the dog's tail and went away looking puzzled.

Eventually, Howard and Costello could stand it no longer and called the Barman over.

"Tell me," said Howard, "why did all those old stockmen come in and look under the dog's tail like that? Is it an old outback custom?"

"Strewth no!" said the barman. "It's just that someone went in and told them that there was a Cattle dog in this bar with two arseholes!"

 - courtesy of http://www.jokes.org.au/john-howard-peter-costello/