Posted on 01/08/2006 8:40:02 PM PST by neverdem
Though it may look vaguely like a hand grenade, the solid white structure in the X-ray is actually someone's appendix, visible only because it is full of buckshot - so full, in fact, that it is stretched to about three times its normal size.
The patient, a 73-year-old Inuit woman at Norton Sound Regional Hospital in Nome, Alaska, had probably been swallowing the pellets inadvertently for decades, in the meat of ducks and geese shot by local hunters.
The image was no surprise to the doctors who interpreted her X-ray, William M. Cox and Gene R. Pesola, who were used to seeing buckshot - though not this much - in the appendix in Alaska natives.
The round spot high above and to the left of the appendix on the film is another pellet on the way down, "probably evidence of a recent meal," the doctors wrote, in a report posted online last week by The New England Journal of Medicine.
Older people with bad or missing teeth may not chew well enough to notice the metal pellets in their food, the doctors said.
Once swallowed, the shot may travel through the digestive tract and leave by the usual exit. But some pellets may find their way into the appendix.
"The buckshot goes down the narrow part of the appendix to the wider part and ends up with nowhere to go since it is a blind pouch," Dr. Pesola explained in an e-mail message, adding that the pellets become trapped because the opening is narrow.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hurons,Mic Maks and Mohawks?????????
What are they doing up there????????
Man some natives don't know how to stay put.
Beav and Butthead think Bonjovi is a wuss.
Ain't no buckshot in that Xray. Birdshot, number 6 or so. Buckshot is almost .36 caliber and would never enter the appendiceal orifice. And if you hunt birds with buckshot you are going to be very, very hungry. Only nine pellets of 00 buck in a 12 ga. shell. And if you can chew, however few teeth you have, a piece of bird meat with a .36" chunk of lead inside without noticing, you must be drunk.
It's the NYT. They don't know, nor do they care to know, much about guns. Besides, antigunners love to use the most ominous, macho term they can find when discussing guns. That's why all rifles are high-powered or assault, all handguns automatic, and why they would never say birdshot when they could say buckshot.
I would believe "birdshot", but not "buckshot".
Cool map, Huron, but I noticed there were no Mohicans. Have we seen the Last of the Mohicans?
My guess is, reporter and doctor are using "buckshot" as a general term for "shotgun pellet" - not realizing buckshot is a fairly specific term.
LOL, that was my first thought when I read "buckshot" - how the #$%& could you chew and swallow without noticing a chunk of lead the size of a ball bearing?
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