DOUBLE BARREL (AGAIN!)
Kelsey Hatcher, 32, of Birmingham, Alabama, gave birth to twins in December 2023, each of which had undergone gestation in separate wombs. Hatcher had known since she was a teenager that she had the rare condition uterus didelphys, giving her two separate uteruses. This is found in less than 0.3 per cent of women, and it is rare for someone to be simultaneously pregnant in both. Hatcher gave birth to her first child on 19 December, and the second on the 20th, so the twins, girls whom she has named Roxi and Rebel, have different birthdays as well as coming from separate wombs. The first was delivered vaginally, but the second by C-section. There are less than 20 cases of uterus didelphys twins on record (see FT296:23 and 297:22 for some other cases), although in 2019 a woman in Bangladesh produced twins from one of her wombs a month after delivering a premature baby from the other, while in early 2023 Elle Ladowitz from Israel gave birth to a boy and a girl from separate wombs (FT436:15). BBC News, 23 Dec 2023.
MAGNETIC MUSCLES
An unnamed 26-year-old man was admitted to New Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ramcomplaining of abdominal pain and vomiting that had gone on for more than 20 days. When he was X-rayed, he was found to have two large metallic clumps blocking his small intestine, with a further clump in his stomach. Surgeons operated immediately to remove the blockages, which were lifethreatening, and found that the clumps were made up of 39 coins and 37 small magnets. In the small intestine, some of the magnets had locked together between the intestinal loops, causing holes to erode in the intestinal wall. The patient then spent seven days in hospital recovering. Questioned as to why he had swallowed the items, he explained that he was a weightlifter and believed they would give him a boost in zinc, which would help with his bodybuilding. While stomach acids will cause zinc to leach from things like coins, and the body will absorb it, the coins and magnets swallowed would have produced far more zinc than the body can handle. This causes zinc toxicity, which leads to stomach pains, diarrhoea and vomiting, and can potentially kill.
