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October
6
Pica
 In honor
of Squirrel
Awareness Week (annually the second week in October), I thought I would write about
pica. Pica is a medical condition in which the affected individual
obsessively eats starch or clay or some other nonfood item. It is
unclear if this is due to some nutritional deficiency (many sufferers
are also anemic) or is purely a mental aberration. The term comes
from the Latin for magpie, Pica pica, a bird often seen carrying
bright and shiny inedible items.
While the internet yielded many delicious pica stories, the best was
the case of a woman (most sufferers are women) in Seattle who went
to the doctor complaining of vomiting, backache, and nausea. She was
found to have a large bezoar (concreted ball of something) in her
stomach.
Bezoars are not unusual in cats and cows, but are very rare in women.
In the cats, bezoars are usually trichobezoars, or hairballs. In cows,
they can be the same or phytobezoars, which are balls of compacted
vegetable matter.
| Saints
of the Day include Saint Bruno, Saint Faith, Saint Nicetas of
Constantinople, and Saint Mary Frances of Naples. |
Birthdays:
Shana Alexander (1925, Boston) and Thor Heyerdahl of Kon Tiki
fame (1914).
Born on this date in 1820 was the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind.
Hans Christian Andersen fell hopelessly in love with her when
she was 21 and he was 42. |
The Seattle woman's bezoar was made up of tube socks.
Naturally,
she hadn't always chewed on tube socks. She started by chewing
on other articles of clothing, settling on her half-a-tubesock-a-night
habit by the time she was an adult. Her boyfriend told the doctor
that she did it "to relax." That was one non-judgmental
boyfriend, I'd say. Can you imagine the first time they sat down to
watch, well...hmmm...guess it probably wouldn't be "Masterpiece
Theater"..."The Simpsons" maybe, and she turns to him
and says, "Do you mind if I eat tube socks?"
Anyway, her problem was taken care of with drugs, vitamin supplements,
and psychiatric therapy, and her bezoar went away without surgery.
Which is more than I can say about the mental image with which I am
left after hearing this story. Bon appetit.
Onward to October 7
Back
to October 5
Back to the Farm
© Marilyn Jones 2000-2008
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