Simply Dumb

Woman has Pencil Removed from Head

by Ariel on August 18th, 2007

This must have been painful.  But then again, this woman is either incredibly unlucky or incredibly dumb to have tripped and fallen on a pencil which got lodged in her brain!  I suppose we should give her the benefit of the doubt, she was only 4 at the time. 

After being plagued for 55 years with the torment of a pencil lodged in her head, a German woman has finally had it removed.

Margaret Wegner, now 59, was 4 years old when she fell while carrying the 3.15 inch-long pencil, which went through her cheek and into her brain.

A computer tomography picture provided by the Park-Klinik Weissensee in Berlin on Tuesday Aug. 7, 2007 shows a pencil inside a woman’s head. After being plagued for 55 years with the torment of a pencil lodged in her head, a German woman has finally had it removed. Margaret Wegner, now 59, was 4 years old when she fell while carrying the eight centimeter-long (3.15 inch-long) pencil, which went through her cheek and into her brain. On Friday, it could finally be removed at the Park-Klinik. (AP Photo/Park-Klinik Weissensee)

A computer tomography picture provided by the Park-Klinik Weissensee in Berlin on Tuesday Aug. 7, 2007 shows a pencil inside a woman’s head. After being plagued for 55 years with the torment of a pencil lodged in her head, a German woman has finally had it removed. Margaret Wegner, now 59, was 4 years old when she fell while carrying the eight centimeter-long (3.15 inch-long) pencil, which went through her cheek and into her brain. On Friday, it could finally be removed at the Park-Klinik. (AP Photo/Park-Klinik Weissensee) (AP)

"It bored right through the skin and disappeared into my head," Wegner told Germany’s best-selling newspaper, Bild. "It hurt like crazy."

At the time the technology did not exist to safely remove the pencil, so Wegner had to live with it _ and the chronic headaches and nosebleeds that it brought _ for the next five-and-a-half decades.

But on Friday, Dr. Hans Behrbohm, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Berlin’s Park-Klinik Weissensee, was able to use modern techniques to identify the exact location of the pencil so that he could accurately determine that the risks of removing it, and then take most of it out.

The operation was particularly difficult because of the way the pencil had shifted as Wegner grew, Behrbohm told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

"This was something unique because the trauma was so old," said Behrbohm, who has also operated to remove bullets from the brains of shooting victims, and glass from the brains of people involved in car accidents.

Though a 0.79-inch piece of the pencil could not be removed, Behrbohm said it does not present a danger.

And now Wegner, the wife of German boxing coach Ulli Wegner, will no longer have the headaches and nosebleeds, and her sense of smell should also return soon, Behrbohm said.

"She shouldn’t suffer any longer," he said.

source Tags: dumb news, pencil head, unfortunate accidents, brain surgery

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POSTED IN: Dumb Pictures, Dumb Science, Painfully Stupid