Ain't nothing you can do about this one but worry

In my senior year high school yearbook, there was a section in the back, doubtlessly mass-produced in many other yearbooks of vintage 1999, in which notable events and news stories from the past year were described. While I'm sure there were many important things in there, the only one I remember (and I remember it vividly) was a mouse with what looked like* a human ear growing out of its back.**

At the time, I was fascinated and repelled by the mouse with the ear on its back. Revisiting it now, I find I still am, so much so that I will decline from posting a picture, though there are plenty on the web if you Google it or click some of the links on this page. I mean, I know the intention was to see if we could grow parts for human transplant on mice, which is nice and all, but the resulting creature is quite grotesque. Okay, totally grotesque.

Which is all to say that I'm super glad I don't (to my knowledge) have any errant parts (human or otherwise) growing where they don't belong. You may think it's silly to be glad about such a thing, but once I tell you about what I discovered yesterday you'll think yourself the silly one.

Here's what I discovered: Humans, after they are fully formed and growing up and living normally, sometimes GROW EXTRA BITS WHERE THEY DON'T BELONG. And I'm not talking about cancer. I'm talking about actual body parts. How terrifying is that!?

From a blog at National Geographic:

One of the most common examples of misplaced cells seems to be livers. They grow all over the place. The first reported case, in 1922, described a liver growing on a gallbladder. Since then doctors have found other livers in gallbladders...as well as in the thoracic cavity, pancreas, esophagus, and on adrenal glands sitting atop the kidneys. A recent review finds 74 so-called ectopic livers reported in the medical literature, and offers no explanation.

Then there are the errant bones. Take a 2005 report of an 85-year-old woman in the U.K. who went to the doctor for bowel troubles. For a month, she had experienced alternating diarrhea and constipation. The doctors had no idea what it could be, so they peered inside her large intestine. They found a 1.5-centimeter pale brown polyp and sent it to the lab for testing. And what was that polyp? A piece of bone. In her colon. Why was it there? Unclear. Similarly, last year, researchers from India described a 16-year-old girl who couldn’t see out of her right eye. The vision loss had started six years earlier, when she suffered “accidental trauma by fist of hand.” Surgeons removed the eye and, a few weeks later, gave her an artificial one. When they analyzed the damaged eye in the lab, they found pieces of adult bone, with marrow and all.

Just one more...In 2007, researchers from Japan reported the case of an 11-year-old girl with a brain tumor. She had had the mass since birth and her doctors had been watching it closely throughout her childhood. By age 11, she needed surgery to remove it. Later, researchers analyzed the dissected tissue. And it was totally weird. As one study put it: “The initial histological analysis demonstrated a tumor growing out of what appeared to be nearly normal looking pancreas.” Pancreas. In her brain.

ACK. I wish I could un-learn all of that! Since I can't, I figure the second best thing is to share the horror.

I had a nightmare last night in which a femur grew out of my eye. I think the internet might be bad for my health.

*****

Bonus: here's two low-quality pictures from my high school days, stolen from someone on Facebook:

The good ol' basement, and its plaid couch.

Disco party! Definitely not a sausage fest.

*Turns out it wasn't an actual human ear, but rather some cow cartilage shaped to look like an ear. But I didn't know that until...right now.
**Wikipedia says this ear mouse ("Vacanti mouse") was unveiled in 1997, so I'm not really sure what it was doing in my yearbook. Did that section include highlights from my whole high school career, perhaps?