There's always bizarre possibilities lurking in the far corners of medical statistics, and every time I run across one it makes me blink. Like monkeypox virus, they often have names that are old-fashioned blunt descriptions rather than either colloquialisms or medicalese.

I had an item in my feed from Mind Hacks, about "An unusual and poignant brain injury." I read it and clicked on the link and ran across a sentence, "There was no tendency, as a matter of fact, for the formation of a brain fungus at either wound." A brain fungus?

I got a vision of the black fungus I'd cooked in wild rice yesterday, only it would be jiggling off the side of some unlucky person's head-wound - in the case of the poignantly injured woman in the .PDF it would've been jiggling off both sides like soft shell antlers had she been unluckier.*

There seems to be no end to the number of unbelievably awful things that can happen, which, I reckon, must indicate that there's no end to the number of unbelievably wonderful things that can happen, as well. All on the far edges, it seems, although some seem not far away enough whilst others we think we'd like closer.

* I'm not sure how luck could even be determined here; if someone is so interested in termination that a bullet is sent from one temple to the other, is it lucky or unlucky that she survived? Once having survived it was lucky that she wasn't (according to what was written) too terribly damaged, and lucky she wasn't a brain fungus type, of course. I wondered what happened after.
I knew a woman whose sister was ironing in her kitchen in the 1950s when a rock, blown into the air by someone illegally dynamiting stumps two miles away, came straight down through the roof of the house and through, too, the roof of her head. Her husband happened to've been walking through the door minutes after into the scene of blood and wailing babes. She survived but had seizures ever after, I was told. Another terrible ironing accident. Let THAT be a lesson, all ye apologists for that type of occupation.

Update:
Enj: did I ever tell you about my daughter's eeg patient?
me: no
Enj: the weirdest one?
me: /me backs away
Enj: well this man came in complaining of headache
me: wud hoppen?
Enj: they could not find anything
me: eep
Enj: took eeg and found ....
dun da dun dun
BRAIN WORMS
eeeesh
me: /me faints.
Enj: /me vomits
me: /me tries to get up but fails.
Enj: farts too
lol
me: I'm blogging tbis.
Enj: it was a tapeworm that went into the bloodstream, I think
me: NOOOOOOOOO
Enj: and lodgitated in the brain

Labels: Dept of ZOMG, Monkeh