Word of the Day That You Never Wanted to Know: Bezoar

Well, word of the very early morning, anyway.

From CNN comes the story of a woman who reported to gastric specialists reporting a five-month history of pain, nausea, vomiting, and a 40-pound (20 kg) weight loss.

Metro's first thought: Five months? If I get pain, vomiting and nausea for five hours then I'm probably off to the quack's.

After a scan of the woman's abdomen showed a large mass, doctors lowered a scope through her esophagus.

It revealed "a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach," wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.

This, O Avid Fans, is a bezoar:



And just what would the 10-lb (5 kg) mass above actually be?



Yup. It is indeed a hairball.

So how does ten pounds of human hair end up in a human stomach? The unfortunate woman suffered from our second Word of the Day That You Never Wanted to Know: tricophagia.

No, it's not a "thing" for eating wiper blades. But close. Sufferers eat great quantities of their own hair.

As you may have guessed from the picture, the physical issue was corrected with surgery. The mental issue seems to have sorted itself out.

Pictures above stolen from CNN and I can haz cheezburger.