Almost matched Rip Van Winkle

by David Grand
July 17, 2003


As I'm sure most of you read recently, a man named Terry Wallis, who went into a coma after an auto accident in 1984, regained consciousness last month, with words pouring out of his mouth like bullets out of a machine gun, and has been talking nonstop ever since. In an ironic twist, it was on Friday the 13th that the accident occurred and it was also on that superstitious date he awaken 19 years later.

That was just one year shy of the 20 years that Washington Irving's good-for-naught, fictional character Rip Van Winkle was snoring like a diesel truck, after drinking too much hooch while hunting in the Catskills. And like Terry Wallis, he too was dumbfounded when he awoke to see that everything had changed while he was in in slumber land. (Terry thought Reagan was still the president.)
But in checking with the Guinness Book of Records, they couldn't hold a candle to the 37 years and 111 days that Elaine Esposito of Tarpon Springs, Florida was in a coma, which began in 1941 after an appendectomy when she was six, and lasted until her death in 1978 at the age of 43.

In glancing through that book of world-class facts, figures and feats from around the globe, I came across some other "medical extremes" that were as extraordinary. Here's a few of those eyebrow-raisers:

  • Yummies for the tummy. A Frenchman, born in June 1950, named Michel Lotito (a k a "Mr. Eat-Everything") has been eating metal and glass since 1959. And X-rays have confirmed his ability to consume two pounds of metal per day. His diet since 1966 has included 10 bicycles, a supermarket cart (in four and a half days), seven TV sets, six chandeliers, a Cessna light aircraft and a computer. He's also eaten a coffin, handles and all, which would make him the only man in history to have a coffin inside of him. (Hmmm. Could it possibly be that Saddam had hired him to devour his weapons of mass destruction before we got there? The CIA had better check it out thoroughly before informing the president.)
  • Cardiac arrest. The longest period of cardiac arrest in which the victim survived is four hours, was in the case of a Norwegian fisherman, Jan Egil Refsdahl, who fell overboard in the icy waters off Bergen on December 7, 1987. His body temperature fell to 77 degrees F and his heart stopped beating. But incredibly, he made a full recovery after he was connected four hours later to a heart-lung machine. (No doubt he's now working in a cannery canning sardines rather than netting 'em.)
  • Largest tumor. The largest tumor ever removed intact was a muticystic mass of the ovary weighing 303 pounds. The 3-foot-diameter growth was removed in its entirety from the abdomen of an unnamed woman in October 1991 at the Stanford University Medical Center. The patient shrunk to 210 pounds after the 6-hour operation. (They haven't invented a liposuction machine that could suck out that much fat in that short of time.)
  • Underwater submergence. In 1986, 2-year-old Michelle Funk of Salt Lake City made a full recovery after spending 66 minutes under water. (Move over Jonah.)
  • Gulp! The heaviest object extracted from a human stomach was a 5 lb. 3 oz. ball of hair from from a 20-year-old female compulsive swallower at the South Devon Hospital in England in March 1895. (That's the hairiest story I've ever heard.)
  • Most gallstones. In August 1987, 23,500 gallstones were removed from an 85-year-old woman at Worthing Hospital, Sussex, England, after she complained of severe abdominal pains. (That large figure probably equates with the number of Big Macs and greasy french fries she'd eaten over the years.)
  • Hic! Charles Osborn of Anthon, Iowa hiccupped every one and half seconds for 69 yr. 5 mo., until February 1990. He started hiccupping in 1922 when he was slaughtering a hog. (Doubtful he sang in the church choir, or was a member of the Toastmasters.)

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