(PCM) Usually when teenage girls aren’t eating dinner with the family it’s because, well, they’re being teenagers…not because a giant hairball is taking up their insides.
A 19-year-old girl from Indore, India went to Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital in Indore last month, complaining she hadn’t been able to eat or drink anything for days. When doctors examined the young woman, they were shocked to discover a four-pound hair ball stuck between her stomach and small intestine, the New York Daily News reported.
The girl had an unhealthy habit of eating her hair and chalk while in class, a combination that formed together and stuffed up her insides. Luckily, doctors were able to surgically remove the mass from the girl.
Pulling out your hair and eating it is a serious condition called Trichophagia. It is characterized by the person eating hair, usually their own; primarily after pulling it out. In extreme cases like this one, it can lead to hair balls. According to CNN, one of the largest hairballs ever removed weighed nearly 10 pounds and was removed from the stomach of an 18-year-old woman with trichophagia.
To see a picture of the 4-pound hairball, click here.
Photo credit: Peter Essick/Getty Images/Aurora
