Baby eats own hands

[snopes]

Comment: I remembered a legend I had heard of in 1986, in ATL. It goes something like this:

A couple was going out of town and they were waiting on their w/e baby
sitter. They were afraid to miss their flight so they went ahead and left
knowing that the sitter would be there soon. When the sitter finally
arrived the door was locked, she knocked but noone came to the door so she
figured they must have took their baby with them.

On Sunday when the couple returned they heard their baby crying and when
they when to check on it they discoverd that the baby sitter was not there
and saw that the baby had eaten one of its hands off.

Now, I do not know the sex of the baby, but I can give a list of months
that this could have happened in. I worked a Wholesale Jewerly store
(SWEST in Nocross, GA just in case that helps you located where this might
have happened) from August 1985 to December 1986. Also I heard it from a
co-worker that her sister worked in the ER where the baby brought in.

[Salamander]

Uhhh... what?

Okay... lemme get this straight, a baby, like as in one with probably no teeth eats its own hand off. Mmmm... even if we assume the baby is teething and has a handful of teeth, chewing off a hand? Actually crunching through bone?

Why? Because it was hungry? I somehow doubt the hunger pains would have been greater than the pain caused by slowly chewing off your own hand. What about blood loss?

Unless someone has an amazing medical explanation, this is story is pure bullpuckey.

[Artemis]

Isn't this UL already on snopes, minus the hand eating?

And wasn't there already a news story about a girl who chewed off her fingers? She had some kind of mental disroder, though.

[Salamander]

Originally Posted by Artemis

Isn't this UL already on snopes, minus the hand eating?

And wasn't there already a news story about a girl who chewed off her fingers? She had some kind of mental disroder, though.

A mental disorder or a hallucinogenic drug like PCP (which causes or is known to cause disassociation) I could understand. Just being hungry though? No.

[Artemis]

Yeah...I remember reading about that other story on another message board. The family had done everything possible to keep the girl from biting off her fingers..definitely wasn't a case of hunger.

The snopes UL I was referring to was this one. Except that the baby just starves to death instead of eating itself...slightly more realistic!

[Victoria J]

Originally Posted by Artemis

Yeah...I remember reading about that other story on another message board. The family had done everything possible to keep the girl from biting off her fingers..definitely wasn't a case of hunger.

I have read about the difficulties faced by people who are born so that they feel no pain, and have seen pictures of a girl suffering for this who had eaten parts of her hands. It was a bit like someone biting their fingernails but when she hit flesh she didn't get any pain signal to make her stop. I think her parents had ended up having her teeth removed. I have no idea where I read this now though, it was many years ago.

It did stick in my mind, along with the fact that people suffering from this tend to get arthritis because they walk too heavily and "hurt" themselves with every step, and that until people started to understand the disorder most people with it didn't survive infancy.

Victoria J

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by Victoria J

It did stick in my mind, along with the fact that people suffering from this tend to get arthritis because they walk too heavily and "hurt" themselves with every step, and that until people started to understand the disorder most people with it didn't survive infancy.

This is essentially what leprosy does to you, I think - it kills your pain receptors, and the other effects follow from that because you don't notice when you're hurting yourself.

[Artemis]

That sounds horrible, Victoria J. I remember reading in some human body/sciency book, when I was younger, about the function of pain, and how we know that something is wrong when there's pain. I remember thinking that it didn't seem all that useful, since it's usually obvious when something's hurting you, right? Makes you realize just how useful pain really is...

[barbrainey]

About two years ago, I saw on a program on the Discovery Health Channel about a little girl who was born with the feel-no-pain disorder. Since she couldn't feel any pain, she would at times seriously injure herself. She would even poke herself in her own eyes. She did this so often to one eye that it became so seriously injured that it had to be removed! She had to have a glass eye put in.

Barbara R.

[kizzcee007]

I dont know if this is the same thing but there is a condition called Prader-Willis (sp?) Syndrome. The condition causes the person to eat all the time. They have no "full-up feeling" and will eat almost anything. I know personally of people having to have all their teeth removed because they have this condition and have lost fingers, tongues, etc due to their strange and compulsive eating habits.

[Squishy0405]

What I remeber is from this "story is that the babysitter left a message saying she couldn't make it & the parents had just left (to catch their flight, baby in highchair). They return however longer later (a week or two) to find the baby had chewed all of it's fingers off from desperation & hunger & also had died.

[Lawgiver]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/condi...tsc.oppenheim/

I saw this little girl not long ago, I remember because she has the same name as my DD. While it may seem nice to not have any pain,she would never know if something is wrong like a ruptured appendix, broken bones, or even labor pains when she has children.

[Chloe]

Originally Posted by Lawgiver

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/condi...tsc.oppenheim/

I saw this little girl not long ago, I remember because she has the same name as my DD. While it may seem nice to not have any pain,she would never know if something is wrong like a ruptured appendix, broken bones, or even labor pains when she has children.

I can see why it's a good idea to know your appendix has ruptured or that you're broken a bone, but are labor pains really a blessing?

[Lawgiver]

Originally Posted by Chloe

I can see why it's a good idea to know your appendix has ruptured or that you're broken a bone, but are labor pains really a blessing?

Well, you dont want to pop the baby out while waiting in line at Wal-mart

[babyshoes]

Originally Posted by Chloe

I can see why it's a good idea to know your appendix has ruptured or that you're broken a bone, but are labor pains really a blessing?

Yes. Yes, they are. I won't bore/disgust anyone with the whole story of my first child's birth but being able to feel all my labor pains would definately have been a good thing. I was timing them as irregular, 8-15 minutes apart; after I went to the hospital and they put the monitor on me, turns out contractions were about 3 minutes apart. It was quite interesting to watch the contractions on the monitor and not feel them.

Aw poor kid. That sounds awful for her and her parents.

Pain is definitely useful, but why does it have to be such a nag?

"Yes, dental nerves, thank you for alerting me to that cavity, but my appointment isn't until Friday so the task is in hand, there's no need to keep hurting like that."

[Ezri]

That is a terrible thing to have to deal with when having a small child. The only upside I can see to having no pain is if you wanna get out of taking a test you can break whatever wrist/arm you write with and then you don't have to take it for another few months. But her eyes are permanantly damaged, one is fake, sorry I have this weird squemish feeling about eyes, they make me woozy, I can't imagine having something happen to one of my eyes!

[Buckle Up]

Originally Posted by kizzcee007

I dont know if this is the same thing but there is a condition called Prader-Willis (sp?) Syndrome. The condition causes the person to eat all the time. They have no "full-up feeling" and will eat almost anything. I know personally of people having to have all their teeth removed because they have this condition and have lost fingers, tongues, etc due to their strange and compulsive eating habits.

There is also a disorder called pica which causes victims to adopt strange compulsions to eat things such as dirt, paint chips, rocks, etc. Pica strikes children and pregnant women at a higher rate than the general public.

[inkrose115]

When my sister was a baby she would chew holes in the blanket and try and eat the peices, and even eat the wood of her crib. Turned out she was malnourished due to a problem with her digestive system, but surgery fixed it and that was the end of eating weird stuff at night.