14 DAY TRIAL // This just in (from the wondrous kingdom of Are-You-Freakin'-Kidding-Me): a woman in central Colombia needed urgent medical care after trying to use a potato as a contraceptive only to have the darn spud grow roots inside her.
Media reports say the incident occurred in the town of Honda. Not at all surprisingly, the woman's name hasn’t been shared with the general public. All things considered, chances are her identity will forever remain a mystery.
The most bizarre medical case ever
The 22-year-old woman is understood to have visited a local health clinic in the town on Honda earlier this week. Apparently, she decided that it might not be such a bad idea to go see a doctor after she started experiencing severe abdominal pains.
She was examined by a nurse, identified as Carolina Rojas, who was quite surprised to find roots sticking out from the woman's private parts. Eventually, the 22-year-old admitted that she had a potato inside her body.
The patient further explained that she had inserted the potato in her body because she had hoped this would prevent an unwanted pregnancy. By the looks of it, she did not come up with this wacky idea on her own. On the contrary, it was her mother who advised her to do so.
“My mum told me that if I didn't want to get pregnant, I should put a potato up there, and I believed her,” the 22-year-old told the doctors in charge of handling her case, as cited by International Business Times.
Apart from the fact that she willingly inserted the spud in her body, the woman left it there for about 2 weeks, during which time she tended to her usual business. Unfortunately for her, the potato germinated and started to grow roots.
The good news is that doctors managed to remove the spud without having to operate on the woman. The 22-year-old did not suffer any serious injuries or damage to her reproductive organs, and is expected to soon make a full recovery.
The bigger picture
This story might be somewhat entertaining in a really twisted kind of way, but the truth is that what happened to this woman is no laughing matter.
This piece of news just goes to show that, unfortunately, there still are people in this world who are utterly clueless about proper contraception and about how best to keep safe when being intimate with others. Hence, unwanted pregnancies and STDs are common occurrences in many parts of the world.
Mind you, one does not have to be a rocket scientist or even a World Health Organization employee to figure out what the best way to deal with this problem is. In a nutshell, education is the key.