Tag Archives: oceania

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Doctors find 10cm cement chunk poking its way through man's heart

Doctors in the US have taken a 10 centimetrel-long chunk of cement out of a 56-year-old's heart, giving a bizarre explanation as to how it got there in the first place.

In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors Gabe Weininger and John Elefteriades described how the man showed up in an emergency room with chest pain and shortness of breath.

When they looked at scans, they found a 10 centimetre long sharp object poking a hole through his lung and puncturing his right long.

WARNING: Graphic image below

The 10cm piece of cement was poking through the man's heart and lung.

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During surgery doctors pulled the narrow object out of his chest, and found it was a cement embolism.

The cement got there as a complication of a procedure the patient had a week earlier.

In kyphoplasty, polymethylmethacrylate medical cement is injected into the spine of a patient as part of repairing damaged vertebrae.

It appeared the cement had worked its way from the spine into the man's heart.

"Cement embolism is a described complication of kyphoplasty; the cement can leak into the venous system, harden, and embolise," the article in the Journal of Medicine states.

Surgeons conducting chest surgery on the man pulled out this 10cm piece of cement.

There were no complications from the second procedure, and the man had nearly recovered after a month.

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Victorians share debilitating effects of long COVID

Two Victorians have spoken out about the debilitating effects of suffering from long COVID-19.

Will, an athlete and then 23, shared his story at Victoria's COVID-19 media conference today revealing that 18 months on, he was still suffering from relapses of crippling exhaustion.

Kim Hanrahan, 49, contracted 14 months ago and said she now feels as if she has "aged 10 years" struggling with fatigue.

We have republished their full statements from the media conference below.

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Will's battle with long COVID

I contracted COVID in March of last year, three days after returning home from America.

I'd been studying at college in Boston. I've been battling long COVID ever since.

The initial illness was incredibly frightening. The feeling of straining against your own body, trying to expand your lungs against this invisible force, struggling to breathe.

But it was, in medical terms, a "mild" case. I wasn't hospitalised. I was never in ICU. And I was officially cleared after a couple of weeks.

And what a lot of people don't realise is that even a mild case of COVID can turn into long COVID, which can severely impact your life there far longer than you would imagine.

READ MORE: Victoria's grim COVID-19 record

The conversations around COVID often focus on two drastically different ends of the spectrum.

Hospitalisations and death on the one hand, mild symptoms and quick recovery on the other.

But I'm here to tell you that the distance between these two extremes is massive and that's where long COVID lives.

And having inhabited that space for the last 18 months, take my word for it – it's not a place you want to be.

Long COVID is real, it's random and it's characterised by periods of remission interspersed with intense symptom flare-ups.

It can take many forms and, for me, that meant months after my diagnosis I still couldn't walk around the block without getting lightheaded and needing to lie down, struggling to breathe.

I was 23 and had just come off the back of four years of division one college athletics, training two times a day, six days a week.

Now I had such debilitating fatigue that I sometimes couldn't even get out of bed.

These days, a relapse can be brought on by something as simple as walking the dog or going for a kick of the footy.

The physical impacts are lessening over time. I can now go through long stretches where I'm mostly OK.

But I'm still nowhere near normal.

Long COVID takes its toll in many ways, and it's the invisible impacts that mentally wear you down.

READ MORE: Melbourne becomes world's most locked-down city

The shame of constantly having to tell people that you're still not better yet.

The frustration you feel with your own body that you just can't seem to get over this postviral syndrome.

And the constant fear and anxiety that, at any moment, the symptoms can come back.

I know there are many who have had things far worse than I have, and I'm definitely not here to cry "poor me".

In many ways, I've been incredibly lucky. Instead, I'm keen to do anything I can to help get the vaccination message out there.

It doesn't matter how young you are, it doesn't matter how fit you are and it doesn't matter how indestructible you feel.

COVID can still hit you and you don't have to be on a ventilator to have your life turned upside-down for months, or maybe even years.

Why take that risk?

There were no vaccinations available when I got sick.

There was nothing I could do. Nothing any of us could do.

I felt so powerless for such a long time.

But we're not powerless anymore. We can fight back.

And we can now protect ourselves and those we love.

We can get vaccinated.

'I feel like I've aged 10 years'

My name is Kim Hanrahan.

I'm 49 and I live in Newport with my husband Dave and our nine-year-old twin boys Sam and Charlie.

Late last July, my husband and I contracted COVID from our house cleaner.

We were very careful and stayed upstairs while she cleaned downstairs and then vice-versa.

She wore a mask, as did we.

Although Dave had asthma, he was fortunate enough to only get mild symptoms.

A few days later, I started to go downhill rapidly.

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By day 11, I continued to be bedridden, unable to sleep, with body aches and pains that not even strong pain relief could mask.

I couldn't finish a sentence without difficulty breathing.

I didn't know if this was as bad as it was going to get but didn't know how it could get any worse.

It was during my daily COVID call with DHHS that I was unable to talk properly – they, thankfully, realised how unwell I was and advised me to call an ambulance straight away.

With a very low blood oxygen level, I was taken to Footscray Hospital's emergency department.

I was put on oxygen and given steroids and medication to help combat the disease.

I went into ICU for six days, so lucky to not be on a ventilator like so many patients around me.

My lungs had collapsed and I required a constant flow of oxygen.

I was regularly on a machine with an invasive full head mask with fast-flowing air.

COVID also stripped me of my dignity, unable to go to the bathroom or wash myself.

I had to rely on the amazing kindness of the ICU nurses who cared for me at their own risk.

I'm so grateful to all of them, especially those who'd gone from 9-to-5 jobs to retrain for the ICU ward's punishing 12-hour day and night shifts.

I thank them for their altruism and the sacrifice on their personal and family lives.

After ICU, I then spent nearly a week isolated in a hospital room as my blood oxygen was still very low.

Again, looked after by amazing staff head to toe in uncomfortable PPE for very long shifts.

Every day, I desperately hoped my health would improve so I could go home to see my beautiful boys.

My husband was solely looking after them in isolation which took a toll on all of them.

We were lucky enough to have a great community that would drop off food at the front door.

When I got home, I was still unwell and had to isolate which was hard, but I was home, recovery was slow.

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A couple of months after leaving hospital, unexpectedly, my hair started falling out and I lost about three-quarters of it over a six-week period.

This temporary hair loss was due to the trauma my body had gone through getting COVID-19.

Now, prior to COVID-19, I had no underlying health conditions and was a reasonably healthy woman – 14 months later and I feel that I have aged 10 years.

I am still feeling the long-term effects of COVID-19.

My fitness has been severely impacted. I have brain fog at times and fatigue, taking a lot more effort to do the same daily activities.

I feel a lesser version of myself due to this horrible, debilitating disease which makes me sad for my boys.

My message to you: we are so lucky in this country to have access to vaccines and great healthcare.

If I got the Delta variant before vaccines were introduced, I truly do not know if I would be standing here today talking to you.

Do not play Russian roulette with your health or with those you love.

Please, get vaccinated.