Doctors to remove 16-pound facial tumor

    Doctors to remove 16-pound facial tumor
    A 15-year old Vietnamese girl, Lai Thi Dao, is awaiting surgery in Miami, Florida. The surgery is to remove a 16-pound facial tumor. The surgery is needed to allow her to speak and eat once again.

    Lai Thi Dao suffers from a Schwannoma tumor which has been growing on her face since she was 3-years old.

    The tumor has grown to the point where she is no longer able to eat or speak.

    It has even kept her from going to school.

    Doctors have a 10-hour surgery scheduled for April 29 to remove the tumor. The surgery will be held at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

    If they do not remove the tumor, it could suffocate and kill the girl.

    These types of tumors are usually benign, but doctors stated that the size of this particular tumor is extremely rare.

    The International Kids Fund is trying to gather up donations to help fund the girl’s surgery. A link to the page for the International Kids Fund is below.

    Once the tumor is removed, Lai hopes to get back to school in Vietnam. Doctors do not believe the tumor will return once it is removed.

    Doctors to remove 16-pound facial tumor

    Doctors to remove 16-pound facial tumor

Mentos Madness Set Diet Coke Fountain Record

    It is the kind of experiment which gets even older kids excited about science.

    Students in the Belgian city of Leuven have set the new world record for most Mentos fountains by launching 1,360 simultaneous geysers.

    After they each dropped a tube of the mints into a bottle of Diet Coke, Ladeuzeplein square became a sudden sea of foaming soda yesterday, with carbonated streams shooting up to 29 feet high.
    Mentos Madness Set Diet Coke Fountain Record
    Explosion: Belgian students in Leuven out-fizz previous records for adding Mentos to Diet Coke

    Films of the Mentos-Diet Coke mix have been posted on Internet entertainments sites attracting at least 10 million viewers.

    The previous World Record was set in the U.S., when 973 Cola bottles were launched simultaneously.

    The craze has developed into an advertiser's dream with a 20 per cent increase in sales of Mentos Mints last year.
    Mentos Madness Set Diet Coke Fountain Record
    Covered: Seconds later everyone in Ladeuzeplein square is soaked through with sticky soda

    The sweet-maker estimates the craze is worth $10 million free advertising a year. Coca-Cola has also signed deals with leading Internet video celebrities and even ran a Diet Coke-Mentos video on its website for three months.
    Mentos Madness Set Diet Coke Fountain Record
    Scientsts: The men in white coats ensure the bottle explode properly before the attempt

    Although there is no exact scientific explanation for the phenomenon, scientists agree that the reaction is physical, not chemical.

    The most popular cause is believed to be the thousands of tiny pores on each Mentos Mint, which act like nucleation sites allowing carbon dioxide bubbles to form in the drink.

    The bubbles form all over the sweets and when its sink to the bottom it causes the carbon dioxide to whoosh out of the bottle.
    Mentos Madness Set Diet Coke Fountain Record
    Getting ready: Students wait for orders to drop in the Mentos

    There are reports that eating Mentos and drinking Cola simultaneously can result in death caused by the reaction, but no fatalities have been reported so far.

World biggest barbeque in Uruguay

    World biggest barbeque in Uruguay

    People gather around Uruguayan cooks who barbecue meat in an attempt to break a record for the world's largest barbecue in Montevideo

    A meats association in Uruguay on Sunday hosted the world's biggest barbeque on a single grill totalling 1,500 meters in length, media reported.

    As many as 1,252 volunteer cooks grilled 12 metric tonnes of beef and about 20,000 spectators cried with joy when a Guinness judge confirmed the barbecue record had been broken.

    "I'm very proud to be Uruguayan. We have the best beef and now we have the world's biggest barbecue," said one of the cooks.

    The organizer said the gargantuan cookout is held to promote the country's image as a major cattle producer.

    "Uruguay is very small, it's not known for other events so we have to use these kinds of gimmicks so people find out where Uruguay is and what it has to offer," said Fernando Perez Abella, vice president of the National Meats Institute, or INAC in Spanish.
    World biggest barbeque in Uruguay

    People watch Uruguayan cooks barbecue meat in an attempt to break a record

    World biggest barbeque in Uruguay

    Uruguayan cooks barbecue meat in an attempt to break a record

    World biggest barbeque in Uruguay

    World biggest barbeque in Uruguay

    World biggest barbeque in Uruguay

Tiny teenager from India is smallest girl in the world

    from India is smallest girl in the world

    A teenager from India who stands at a tiny 1ft 11in (58cm) tall is the smallest girl in the world.

    Jyoti Amge, 14, is shorter than the average two-year-old child and only weighs 11lb (5kg).
    from India is smallest girl in the world

    Jyoti is smaller than the average two-year-old child

    She has a form of dwarfism called achondroplasia and won't grow any taller than her current height.

    Due to her size, Jyoti has to have clothes and jewellery made for her. She sleeps in a tiny bed and uses special plates and cutlery to eat, as normal-sized utensils are too big.

    Despite this, she goes to a regular school in Nagpur, central India, where she has her own small desk and chair, and her classmates treat her like any other student.
    from India is smallest girl in the world

    Jyoti sits at her mini-desk and chair at school

    Jyoti also shares common interests with other teenagers, with a love for DVDs and fashionable dresses.

    She said: 'I am proud of being small. I love all the attention I get. I'm not scared of being small and I don't regret it.

    'I'm just the same as other people. I eat like you, dream like you. I don't feel any different.'

    Jyoti is treated like a mini-celebrity in her home town, where people flock to meet her and some even treat her like a goddess.

    She will even be releasing an album with her favourite Indian pop star, the bhangra/rap star Mika Singh.
    from India is smallest girl in the world

    Jyoti lines up with her classmates

    Her mum, Ranjana Amge, 45, said: 'When Jyoti was born, she seemed quite normal. We came to know about her disorder when she was five.

    'We consulted a specialist and he said she will be this size all of her life. Jyoti is small, yet cute, and we love her very much.'

    Jyoti is ambitious and hopes to work as a Bollywood actress one day.

    She said: 'I would love to work in a big city like Mumbai, act in films and travel to London and America.
    from India is smallest girl in the world

    Jyoti chats to her friends on her phone, just like any other teenager

    I'm proud of being small. I love all the attention I get because of it.'

    Her dad, Kishanji Amge, 52, said: 'I can't separate myself from her even for a single day. I love her very much.

    'She makes me proud. Lots of gurus come to see and bless her. They pray for her happiness and long life.'

Two Faced Baby Triggers Shock

    Ask anyone along the dusty, pothole-filled road heading to the tiny village of Saini, and they'll know who she is. The one with four eyes. The one with two mouths. The one with two heads.
    Two Faced Baby Triggers Shock

    They are not ashamed of the extraordinary looking little girl, the villagers who live near her, the young parents, the overprotective local doctor. That's because while she may only be 2½ weeks old, she is far more famous than any resident of this part of the country has ever been. She is famous because she was born with a condition known as facial duplication. She has one body and two faces.

    "At first I was a little bit afraid," Vinod Kumar Singh, the 24-year-old father of the girl who still does not have a name, told ABC News. "But then I accepted whatever God gives."

    In this case, God has given what many in this rural part of India consider a reincarnation of Ganesh, the Hindu God who is half person and half elephant. At first, hundreds of locals came to Saini to touch the girl's feet, dance at her bedside and offer the family money, thinking she was as divine a person as they would ever see.

    "People from corner to corner from all India and all abroad come here to take the knowledge about this child," said Harsharan Singh, the village math teacher. "It's a gift of God… Some people say she is like a goddess. They call the baby a face of a goddess."

    Her two faces and the single dimple on their shared cheek are as placid as any baby's. She is the first child of a farming family, one of about 100 people living in a village 40 miles outside New Delhi. Here, the average income is less than $2 a day, and the locals either work the field or support those who work the field in any way they can.

    During a recent visit by ABC News, villagers fanned the baby, swatting dozens of flies away so she could sleep. The village, like so many in India, is modest. There is no electricity, there are no toilets, and there is no technology.

    The parents did not know that anything was wrong with their daughter until she was born. Tens of millions of pregnant women in rural India do not receive prenatal care.
    Two Faced Baby Triggers Shock

    "They're not aware enough that they should come in for treatment," said Dr. M. Ashmosd, the resident medical officer of nearby Saifi Hospital, where the girl was born.

    Ashmosd was part of the team that delivered her vaginally. Still, he does not know the details of the baby's condition because the parents have not agreed to let the hospital perform a CT scan or an MRI on her head.

    "I've told them we're ready to do the CT scan for free. But they have ignored me," he told ABC News.

    Experts in the United States who have performed surgeries on children with similar conditions say they can't know what the baby's prognosis will be without scans.

    "A brain MRI would be illuminating, to say the least. Without it we only can presume about what could be possible or what her quality of life would be with or without reconstructive surgery," Jorge Lazareff, the director of pediatric neurosurgery at UCLA Hospital in Los Angeles, told ABC News.
    Two Faced Baby Triggers Shock

    The parents and the villagers have turned inward. Visited by a dozen media outlets, they at first refused to allow an ABC News team to ask any questions or shoot any video, accusing reporters of "making stories for their own profit." Eventually, they relented, but the local doctor refused to allow the mother to speak and interrupted an interview with the father.

    "She is very normal," Dr. Brigdal Nagar yelled, pointing at an ABC News reporter and shoving Vinod Singh aside. "We don't need the media here. She's not an abnormal baby. It's just that she has two faces. And she's living a very normal life. And if she dies in the future, it's as God wishes."

    Villagers have tried to make her life as normal as they can. The visitors who welcomed the baby's birth are no longer coming around. She is surrounded by only her family and their friends.

    But perhaps she is too protected. Because the parents won't agree to allow the hospital to perform a CT scan, there is no way to know exactly what she is suffering from, no way to know if her life is in danger.

    Two Faced Baby Triggers Shock

    In 2004, a Dominican baby was born with a second head that was attached only to the first head, not the rest of her body. That condition, in which the second head is the product of a conjoined twin that stops developing in the womb, is known as craniopagus parasiticus. Surgery to remove the parastic twin killed the baby.

    In 2005, an Egyptian woman named Naglaa Mohamed gave birth to Manar, who had two heads but also the remnants of an unformed twin's torso attached to her abdomen. Her surgery was successful, and eventually she appeared on the "Oprah Winfrey" show.

    But for the Indian baby, there is no way to tell whether she has two spinal columns, whether there are multiple internal organs, or whether she will survive until the CT scan is completed.

    "She's normal right now," Dr. Brigdal said. "But in the future she might face problems."

    Lazareff was slightly more optimistic, writing by e-mail that "I presume that there is no reason for her not [to] live a long life. Stress on presume."

    As for the parents, they are a bit overwhelmed by all the attention. They are overwhelmed by the terrifying thought that they have to raise a child who is so visibly different.

    "She's just a simple baby," Vinod Singh says, before admitting with a touch of sadness, "she's not well."

    If she survives, despite the odds, she might match her reputation.

    "If everything below the neck is fine, and she could keep her head up, then she could walk around and live," said Henry Kawamoto, a Los Angeles-based specialist in facial plastic surgery. "And if she did that, she really would be a goddess."

Total Pageviews