14 DAY TRIAL // Not too long ago, doctors at a hospital in the city of Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, a country in Central Asia, operated on an 18-year-old girl and pulled a massive hairball from her stomach.
The hairball, a photo of which is available next to this article, tipped the scale at an impressive 9 pounds (approximately 4 kilograms). It comprised not just hairs, but also carpet fibers.
The surgeons who operated on this 18-ear-old girl, identified as Ayperi Alekseeva, say that, had they not pulled the hairball out of her digestive tract, the teenager would have eventually died.
Not an easy medical case
It is understood that the 18-year-old girl's parents took her for a consult at a local hospital in the town of Batken after the teenager started complaining of stomach pains. Needless to say, these pains were pretty severe.
Doctors here used X-rays to have a look at her entrails, and found that a weird mass was blocking her digestive tract. Having figured out that this case was too much for them to handle, they referred her to specialists at the Bishkek Hospital.
Seeing how the girl was unable to eat or drink anything and was consequently severely dehydrated and malnourished, surgeons decided that there was only one thing left to do: cut the 18-year-old open and remove the mass stuck inside her stomach.
It was thus discovered that what was killing the girl was a massive hairball that was lodged in her stomach and that was preventing her from getting any kind of nutrients. Doctors removed it and say that, following this intervention, Ayperi Alekseeva should have no trouble eating and drinking.
“The parents brought her in after she started losing weight, and she couldn't eat anything. By the time we got her, she couldn't even drink water. We realized we needed to operate immediately. It was actually the only alternative, nothing else would solve the problem.”
“In fact, her stomach was so badly swollen from hair and bits of wool from the carpet that it literally just oozed out soon as the wall of the stomach was cut,” surgeon Bahadir Bebezov told the press in an interview, as cited by Daily Mail.
How did the hairball get there?
As it turns out, the 18-year-old girl pretty much did this to herself. Thus, the hairball only formed in her stomach because, as a child, Ayperi Alekseeva picked up the habit of eating hair from the carpet. Besides, she also liked to chew on the tips of her hair as often as she had the chance.
Interestingly enough, it appears that, apart from her passion for eating hair, this girl is not suffering from any psychological conditions. As Bahadir Bebezov put it, “Psychologically, apart from a habit of picking up hair from the carpet and eating it, the young girl was perfectly normal and healthy.”
Now that the hairball is no longer blocking her digestive tract, the girl is expected to make a full recovery. She promises that, when she is finally given permission to go back home with her parents, she will stick to eating actual food.