Photo by Multi Awesome Studio on Unsplash
On our way to Computer Village two weeks ago, Google Maps routed us through Oba Akinjobi Road to avoid mad Lagos traffic on Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way. As we snail-crawled past LASUTH (Lagos State University Teaching Hospital), I remembered an interesting story from a few years back.
My friend had called me.
Usually a calm person, I could tell she was distressed. She told me her junior brother had fallen from a story building (I can’t remember the floor he fell off from). He had been rushed to LASUTH.
Too scared to ask, I asked, “How is he?”
“The doctors said he will be fine.” Then hesitantly she went on. “But they said they had to put his skull in his stomach and it would stay there for some days.”
“Eh…?”, I was sure I hadn’t heard her right.
“They put his skull in his stomach.”, she repeated.
Honestly, I didn’t want to sound panicked, but. “Stomach ke? Why? Is that normal?”
“That’s why I called you. I wanted to know if you had heard of anything like that before.”
I told her I was going to search the Internet and I would get back to her.
That was how I went to enquire from Google.
Apparently, there is such a thing😐. When there’s trauma to the head and brain swelling occurs, one of the options is removing the skull to reduce pressure on the brain as it swells, and to ease blood flow. And a viable place to store the brain is in the person’s abdominal wall. Another option is to store it in a deep freezer, but this comes with its own attendant risks, one of which is the risk of power outage.
I came back with my findings and we both calmed down.
When time came, the skull was put back and he made a full recovery.
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