Jake Young is a 
A woman who fell when she was four and got a pencil in lodged in her head has one of the craziest MRIs ever (on the right, click to enlarge):
Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil when she was four. It punctured her cheek and part of it went into her brain, above the right eye.The 59-year-old has suffered headaches and nosebleeds for most of her life.
Surgeons in Berlin were able to remove most of the pencil in a two-hour operation, but a 2cm section was so embedded it was impossible to remove.
...
The pencil measured 8cm (3.1 inches) long, and had narrowly missed damaging an optical nerve. At the time of the accident doctors said it would be too dangerous to operate because it was so close to the brain.
Dr Behrbohm said he was able to carry out the procedure using a 3D reconstruction of Mrs Wegner's interior skull, and an endoscopic surgical system which allowed him to open the frontal sinus, which had suffered serious inflammation.
Crazy town. This sort of reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where Homer realizes he had a crayon in his brain. They take it out, and he becomes a genius. I don't know if we can expect similar results.
This all goes to show you that when your Mom tells you not to run around with sharp objects, you should listen.
Comments
that's nothing... check this out!
stupid crayon!
Posted by: Rick MacPherson | August 7, 2007 3:50 PM
Well ... yeah, but isn't this the same mom who says, "If you keep making that face, it'll freeze like that"?
Posted by: Warren | August 7, 2007 5:05 PM
Here's hoping she doesn't suffer from those headaches or nosebleeds any more...too bad they couldn't get all the pencil, though.
I don't quite think this is what they meant about the pen being mightier than the sword, but she still looks like one sharp cookie. Still, I'm glad that Doctor Behrbohm managed to graphite...get the point?
Posted by: M | August 7, 2007 5:24 PM
Genius? His IQ went all the way up to 105.
Posted by: Caledonian | August 7, 2007 6:06 PM
When my mom was young she was playing "monsters" and stuck crayons in her nostrils, she laughed so hard she snorted and one of them got lodged in her nose, her biggest fear though wasn't the doctor, no I was my how pissed my grandmother would be because she had to take off of work to take her to the hospital. Luckily though the crayon was only there for hours and not for years.
Posted by: dc dan | August 7, 2007 7:15 PM
A bit of a hijack, but watch that Simpsons episode carefully next time it's on: though Homer's IQ increased by 50 points and he became much smarter than the rest of Springfield, he still only claims to have an IQ of 105!
Posted by: lylebot | August 7, 2007 8:25 PM
Reminds me of a friend who was a gifted gymnast. As a kid he could run and did run down the sidewalk and perform a 360° forward flip, landing on feet without missing a beat. Well, he once tried it while eating a popsicle and wound up with the popsicle stick lodged up one nostril. It caused some bleeding but apparently didn't reach his brain (although he was often teased afterwards that it did), since the emergency room doc on duty at the hospital was able to remove it in about half an hour. The moral is don't tumble with a popsicle, even one with a blunt stick!
Posted by: Keanus | August 7, 2007 10:33 PM
Not meaning to be picky or unkind, and I may be wrong but... That looks to me like a CT, not an MRI.
Posted by: tee | August 7, 2007 11:27 PM
"the central part of the foreign body was encapsulated in soft tissue and was not causing the patient any harm, so it was safe to leave it," says the doctor
just imagine how much prefrontal cortical development occurs after age four, and how embedded that pencil really must have been. she's lucky that she was so young, i.e. she successfully avoided tragic phineas gage-like impairment.
that's INSANE.
Posted by: kate | August 8, 2007 11:26 AM