Follow Up: Death By a Thousand Cuts

I recently came across a Straight Dope article on the practice of lingchi, or "Death by a Thousand Cuts," in China.  He confirms that yes, it was a method of corporal punishment until 1905, though the practice of having slips of paper with the body part to be hacked off drawn/written on them can only be traced back to one source.  You can read more here: Did the Chinese really practice death by a thousand cuts?

HOLY CRAP MAGGOTS

WTF, a poor old lady with Alzheimer's was found to have 57 freaking maggots in her ear!

Now, I'd like to back up and talk a little bit about how I find stories to blog about on here.  I check the "weird" or "oddball" section of a lot of news and news aggregate sites, like Reddit and Digg and Huffpo.  I sort through the funny pictures that make up the majority of the posts and try to find the truly horrible somethings that have happened.  A lot of times, I find stories that immediately grab my attention, like this one.  "57 maggots discovered in ear of Alzheimer's patient while she was under care of $10,000-a-month nursing home," you say?  I am all ears! (Get it?)  Then I see the source, though.  Daily Mail.  And it's almost always Daily Mail.  For those of you who don't know, the Daily Mail is a British tabloid.  So I try not to post stuff from the Daily Mail, just like I don't post an article about some lady giving birth to Bat Boy from the National Enquirer.  So I was just about to write this thing off... but first I had to read it... and sure enough, they had an actual source for the piece.

CBS Chicago (click for video) reports that 92-year-old Catherine McCann was discovered to have her ear infested with maggots.  She has severe Alzheimer's and is unable to speak, so the only sign that something was wrong was that she kept tugging at her ear.  From the size of the maggots, it is estimated that the maggots were there 2 1/2 to 3 days. 

She was being cared for at an expensive nursing home which is, understandably, getting its pants sued off right about now.

Woman grows nails instead of hair

A young woman in Memphis, Shanyna Isom, began producing nails instead of hair after an allergic reaction to steroids back in 2009.  This doesn't only affect the hair on her head, but the hair all over her body.  As such, she now needs others to help her move around and even with 25 different medications to help control the condition, can only walk with a cane.  She has consulted doctors all over the country and even one in the Netherlands, but none of them have been able to diagnose her.  It is a true medical mystery.

Source: WMC-TV

More pictures and a video can be found at the WMC-TV news site.

Learn how you can help at the SAI Foundation, founded in order to help Shanyna with her medical bills, as well as others with undiagnosable illnesses.