Specialists at the Carmel Hospital in Israel were able to safely remove a 20-centimeter long toothbrush from the stomach of a young woman who accidentally swallowed it while brushing her teeth.
Last Friday, when she returned home from her job as a caregiver in a retirement home, Bat-El Panker – a 24-year-old resident of Kiryat Yam – went to brush her teeth. When she bent over the faucet with the toothbrush in her mouth, it slipped down her throat.
“I was really scared. I tried to throw (it) up and force it out,” Panker said.
When she didn’t succeed, she rushed to the local hospital and was sent for an X-ray. But the doctors didn’t spot anything, and she was sent home.
“I begged for another exam – I knew I’d swallowed a big toothbrush – but no one believed me,” she said. “They thought I was crazy.”
The next day, suffering from pains, Panker decided to try another hospital and arrived at Carmel. In the emergency room she underwent another round of X-rays and ultrasounds, but the toothbrush remained elusive.
But when the doctors sent her for a CT scan, the missing item was finally spotted.
Dr. Uri Segel, director of the hospital’s gastrointestinal unit, said that the initial diagnosis indicated surgery due to the length of the brush and the angle at which it was resting in the young woman’s stomach.
However, Segel decided to try and remove it using endoscopic equipment. He ran a flexible tube down her throat and manipulated the brush until it was at an angle that allowed it to be removed without damaging her digestive tract.
“We used standard equipment in a non-standard way and I’m happy we could help,” Segel said. “The lesson learned from this incident is that with all the technology and all our experience, doctors have to listen to the patients.”
Panker, who is still hospitalised, expressed her thanks to the medical team but said she was angry that the doctors hadn’t believed her.
“We’re just people who want a little help when we’re hurting, and it’s important that doctors listen,” she said.
A low-lying buzzard is caused a motorcycle crash which claimed the life of a DC man on Sunday afternoon.
31-year-old David Christopher Norris was riding his motorcycle in Upper Marlboro when the bird flew directly into his travel path.
Norris lost control of his bike and ran into a curb and fire hydrant before striking a utility pole.
He was attempting to pass another vehicle on the right shoulder of the road at the time.
Norris was transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Investigators believe speed may have also played a factor in the crash.
Police in said an Indiana man has suffered a minor head injury when he lost control of his motorized bar stool and crashed.
Middlebury police said James Kleckner, 53, was riding a bar stool with a small engine attached Wednesday when he lost control of the homemade vehicle and crashed.
Kleckner suffered a minor head injury and a few scrapes.
Police said Kleckner told them he had consumed alcohol earlier in the day, but he was found not to have been intoxicated at the time of the crash.
He was not cited.
An 18-year-old unidentified woman from Colorado who survived a fiery crash in her sport utility vehicle told police that she lost control and struck a tree … after being distracted by fluttering moths.
According to a police blotter entry, the woman was driving her GMC Denali in Colorado Springs on Tuesday when she veered off the road and crashed.
As gasoline poured from a ruptured fuel line, passing motorists pulled her out of the driver’s side window before the car burst into flames.
The woman suffered only minor injuries and told investigators that she had been distracted by miller moths flying around inside the SUV, police said.
“Drugs or alcohol were not determined to be factors in the accident,” a police spokesman said. There was no immediate word on how many moths were in the vehicle.
Miller moths, the adult stage of army cutworms, take flight by the millions each spring when they emerge from the alfalfa and wheat fields of western Kansas, eastern Colorado and other plains states.
The gray or light-brown moths, which have a wingspan of 1.5 to 2 inches (3.8 to 5 cm), pass through Colorado’s urban corridor as they migrate west to feed on the nectar of wildflowers in the Rocky Mountains during the summer months.
Those moths that survive predators, including birds, bats and bears, return to the plains in the fall.
A firearms safety course went awry in Virgina on Saturday when a man shot himself in the hand with a .45-calibre handgun. The bullet then passed through his hand and struck his wife, who was seated nearby, in the leg.
Michael L. Deel, 54, and Michelle K. Deel, 49, both of Roanoke were attending a firearms safety class being taught and hosted by Thomas F. Starke, 57, according to the department.
The sheriff’s office said that Starke told deputies that he had left the room, heard a shot and returned to find the Deels had been shot.
Emergency dispatchers in Bedford County received a call at 12:25 p.m. reporting a shooting on Chapel Woods Drive.
The Bedford County Sheriff’s Office said county rescue units and deputies responded.
The couple was taken by ambulance to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening.
The shooting remains under investigation.
A motorist in Switzerland had a very lucky escape after his car smashed through a bridge barrier and ending up hanging over a busy motorway.
Andreas Rothstein, 25, who had another passenger with him in the car, lost control of the vehicle and smashed through a crash barrier.
But instead of falling 20 feet to the road below, the car became wedged in the hole, following the accident near the village of Urdorf, Zurich.
A police spokesman said: “There were two people nearby who witnessed what happened and rushed over and held onto the car while the two inside scramble onto a back-seat and out through a window.
“They had a very lucky escape – it could have fallen over at any time.”
Firemen were able to pull the car safety although the road below was closed for two hours. Police said Rothstein may face dangerous driving charges.
