An 80-year-old woman made a horrifying discovery during a CT scan – she had a sewing needle lodged in her skull.
Now, you might be wondering how this needle ended up in her skull. Well, the story is, in fact, quite tragic…
Photos of the woman’s CT scan results were recently released by the Sakhalin Ministry of Health, along with a shocking explanation. Taking into consideration the woman’s age, doctors believe that the needle was inserted into her brain by her own parents, soon after her birth. As shocking as that sounds, such practices were not uncommon in war-torn Russia. Parents who could not afford to take care of their babies in difficult wartime conditions inserted thin needles into their brain through the fontanelle – the gap in the skull that gradually closes as the baby grows – to kill them. This method left no trace, as the fontanelle quickly closed, leaving no evidence of the murder weapon.
“Such cases during the famine years were not uncommon: a thin needle was inserted into the baby’s fontanelle, which damaged the brain,” the regional Health Ministry wrote in a statement. “The fontanelle quickly closed, hiding the traces of the crime, and the baby died.”
It is unclear how the 80-year-old woman survived her parents’ murder attempt – perhaps they considered her survival a miracle and decided that she was meant to be – but even more remarkable is the fact that she never experienced so much as a headache because of the foreign object in her brain. If not for the recent CT scan, she would never have known it was there.
Doctors said that a surgical intervention to remove the metal needle would only put the patient at risk, due to her advanced age. They concluded that the needle did not pose a threat to her health and she would go on with her life as before. She will remain under the supervision of her physician.
That’s absolutely insane, isn’t it?
How would you even begin to process news like this? To find out well into your golden years that not only do you have a foreign object lodged in your head but also that your parents likely tried to murder you as a baby.
It’s seriously so macabre…
