Wacky Stuff

World's First Face Transplant Recipient

She is house-hunting, planning a new career and her once-broken heart is filled with hope.

Isabelle Dinoire knows that rebuilding her life will be a slow process.

But, even though her scars are still livid, she can now look at the world with optimism.

Barely two months ago, the 38-year-old French divorcee received the world's first face transplant and this exclusive photograph reveals the full extent of her remarkable transformation.

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Swiss Hospital To Allow Assisted Suicide

A hospital in Switzerland will allow assisted suicide on its premises for terminally ill patients from the start of next year.

A spokesman of the University Hospital at Lausanne, which made the announcement, has said the conditions for permitting assisted suicide or euthanasia remain very strict.

The practice is legal in Switzerland, the online edition of BBC reported .

Until now, hospitals across Switzerland had refused to allow assisted suicide on site and patients wishing to die by assisted suicide had to leave hospital to do so.

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Girl Born With ‘Heart In Hand’ Dies

A girl born with an external heart held in one of her hands died yesterday of infections, two days after her birth in a Chhattisgarh town, doctors said.

"The baby's heart developed some infection, and after battling for life for 72 hours she died at around 5.30pm today," said P S Sisodia, a senior government doctor who examined the kid's health throughout the day.

The girl was born to Sushila Bai and Jagdish Yadav, residents of Korba, 210km north of here. Doctors recommended a heart transplant but the parents had no money to take her to Chennai for the operation.

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Chemists Stock Up On Viagra Ahead Of Muslim Feast

Chemists across the conservative Middle East are stocking up on sex stimulant Viagra in the hope of huge sales during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr later this week.

Viagra manufacturer Pfizer said pharmacies across the region had increased their stocks of the anti-impotence blue pills "after reporting significant sales increases for the drug over the Eid al-Fitr festival in previous years".

"Figures reveal that during the holiday period, a time when families gather to celebrate Eid, pharmacists have seen a three-fold rise in demand for Viagra," it said.

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Nurses Ordered To Wear Skirts ... Even Mini Skirts

Nurses in a Croatian hospital have been ordered to go back to wearing skirts instead of trousers after complaints from patients.

Some nurses at the town hospital in Firule had been wearing trousers while on duty, but patients had complained they looked untidy and unprofessional.

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Dead's Organs To Be Kept Alive Without Consent

Transplant surgeons in Britain are to be given the legal right to keep patients' organs artificially alive without consent after their death.

The move will give doctors time to win permission from relatives to remove kidneys, livers and lungs for transplant.

The change in the law, to be introduced next April, is likely to lead to a surge in the availability of transplant organs. At present, there is an acute shortage of kidneys in Britain.

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Facing A Surgical Identity Crisis

Five US men and seven women will secretly visit a medical clinic in Ohio in coming weeks to vie for the chance to have a radical operation that has never been tried anywhere in the world.

They will smile, raise their eyebrows, close their eyes and open their mouths.

The Cleveland Clinic's Maria Siemionow will study their cheekbones, lips and noses. She will ask what they hope to gain, and what they most fear. Then she will ask: "Are you afraid you will look like another person?"

Because whoever she chooses will endure the ultimate identity crisis. Dr Siemionow wants to attempt a face transplant.

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Surgeon Punches Wiggling Patient

A Japanese doctor punched a patient during surgery and told him to "shut up" after the patient on local anesthesia asked for the operation to stop.

The patient at the national Shiga Hospital wiggled during the surgery and yelled "please stop the operation," Kyodo News said.

The doctor then punched the patient's forehead and said: "Stay still! Shut up!"

The operation was stopped. The physician and a hospital executive later visited the patient to apologise, Kyodo said.

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Maggot Treatment Saves Mich. Woman's Foot

Barbara Enser wasn't very comfortable at first with the idea of using maggots to clean the wound on her right foot. But if it meant saving it from amputation, she was willing to give it a try.

The 57-year-old Bay City woman was diagnosed with diabetes 40 years ago and subsequently lost her left leg to the disease. She also suffers from neuropathy, meaning she has no feeling in her foot or leg, and ulcers or wounds can develop from constantly putting pressure on the foot.

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Giant Sized Problem For Rescue Workers

Emergency rescue workers in Belgium had a massive problem when the country's biggest man had a heart attack.

First they sent a helicopter after Alain Delaunois, who is 7ft 6ins tall and weighs 32 stone, fell ill at his house in Stavelot, reports Het Laatste Nieuws.

But they couldn't find a way to fit him inside so they called for an ambulance instead - only to find he didn't fit in that either.

Eventually, they found a way to get him into the ambulance and managed to get him into hospital where they encountered more problems.

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