Doctors found 5-foot-long hair inside a teenager's stomach

Have you ever heard of Rapunzel's Syndrome? No, it's not a girl who with long beautiful hair likes the one in fairy tales.

Surgeons in India were just as surprised as they removed a five-foot long hairball from the stomach of a teenager who was so ill she could barely swallow water.

Kavita Kumari, 15, had been swallowing hair for the past year.

The doctors found a large firm mass in her abdomen

Her addiction was so severe that she would not just eat her own hair, but strands she found lying around. She would even pluck the hair of her classmates at school and eat it, it is claimed.

The addiction also meant she had lost interest in eating food and would vomit each time she was force-fed, while complaining of severe abdominal pain and weakness.

Kavita's mother, Phool Devi noticed that her daughter would pull out a strand or two of hair out of her but ignored it.

Her classmates reported the same thing somehow she thought it was just her way of teasing them. Worried when their daughter's stomach began swelling.

Kavita's parents took her to several doctors. Each time, she was sent away with medicines to help the pain and swelling. But when her condition became worse, her father Bechan Ram took her to Siddharth Multi-Specialty Hosipal and Research Center to know what is happening.

After examining her, doctors found a large firm mass in her abdomen. They claim that she needs to undergo an operation. Dr Lal Bahadur Sidharth, a gastro and laparoscopic surgeon at the hospital, said

Kavita had come to us with complaints of extreme pain in the stomach.

She was in a very serious condition, malnourished and very weak. She was barely able to stand on her own.

This condition is also known as trichophagia which is a disorder that leads the human to eat the hair, which is sometimes associated with the hair pulling disorder trichotillomania. Who would have thought some people had cravings of hair?

Despite knowing the hairball was there, doctors were astonished to discover during the two hour operation that it was more than five feet long.

I didn't expect the hairball to be this big,

said Dr Bahadur Sidharth.

I had never seen such a case before.

The operation became successful with the help of Dr. Lal Bahaddur Siddharth and his team. They gave proper treatments. The girl is now on her way to recovery.

However, the teenager's mom still could not accept that her daughter has a psychological condition but is so glad that she could save.

Thank you so much for dropping by and reading this article. Visit our website regularly for more interesting and trending news and stories.

If you enjoyed this post, please share this with your friends and if you have any comment, please write below. Thanks!