Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Page B
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Ads: Link
so mother Keri McCartney was very deeply anaesthetized—necessary to completely relax the uterus, doctors explained—then the surgical team cut open the uterus, pulled the fetus mostly out (feet first), removed the tumor, put her back inside, and sewed up the uterus very carefully so that it would still hold the amniotic fluid. Ten weeks later Macie Hope was “born again,” a perfectly healthy little girl.
BATS IN THE BELFRY
Jeanna Giese of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, was 15 in 2004 when she went to the hospital with tremors and difficulty walking. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and she was getting worse, so she was transferred to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin (CHW) in Milwaukee. Doctors there suspected rabies, and Jeanna then told them that she’d been bitten by a bat that she had picked up at church…more than 40 days earlier. A test for the virus confirmed that she had it, which was very, very bad—people infected with the rabies virus who don’t get vaccine shots immediately—before the onset of symptoms—don’t live. Nobody in history had been known to recover from such a situation. That meant Jeanna, whose brain was already swelling, was in grave danger. The doctors at CHW searched in vain for a treatment plan; there wasn’t one. So they had to invent one: With her parents’ approval, they gave Jeanna drugs to protect her nervous system, then put her in a coma and hoped her immune system would “learn” to fight the virus, build up, and eventually win. They tested her spinal fluid to see how she was progressing, and a week later brought her out of the coma…because her immune system had eradicated the virus. She spent the next month in intensive care, followed by therapy to get her brain and muscles back in shape, and within a year she was back in school and even able to drive. She is the first unvaccinated person in history known to have had full-blown rabies and fully recovered. She’s now being studied by some of the world’s leading neurologists, who want to know just how she did it. Asked if she’d ever pick up a live bat again, the ardent animal lover answered, “I would.”
About 25 million meteors hit Earth’s atmosphere every day.
THY WILL BE DONE
There are famous last words, and then there are the last words of the famous. Here are some odd bequests made in the wills of well-known people .
B OB FOSSE. The choreographer and Oscar-winning director of Cabaret died in 1987 and left exactly $378.79 each to 66 people so they could “go out and have dinner on me.” Recipients included Dustin Hoffman, Liza Minelli, Melanie Griffith, and Roy Scheider (who portrayed Fosse in All That Jazz ).
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. When the playwright ( Pygmalion ) died in 1950, he left more than £300,000 to develop a new, more precise English alphabet of 40 letters to replace the current one. (Someone created it, but it never caught on.)
GENE RODDENBERRY. The creator of Star Trek , who died in 1991, arranged for his cremated remains to be scattered in space. And in 1997, they were shot out into space from a Spanish satellite (along with the ashes of 23 other people).
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. It’s been widely reported that when Shakespeare died he willed his wife, Anne Hathaway, his “second-best bed.” Some scholars say it was an insult that he didn’t leave her his best bed. But in the 17th century, a home’s best bed was reserved for guests; a husband and wife slept in the second-best. The note in the will was a sentimental gesture.
HARRY HOUDINI. The famous magician bequeathed his collection of books on magic to the American Society for Psychical Research…on condition that J. Malcolm Bird, an ASPR official whom Houdini hated, resign. Bird refused, so the books went to the Library of Congress. Houdini also had a bronze bust of himself placed on his tomb to guide him back from “the other side.”
DUSTY SPRINGFIELD. The 1960s singer (“Son of a Preacher Man”), who died in 1999, set
BATS IN THE BELFRY
Jeanna Giese of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, was 15 in 2004 when she went to the hospital with tremors and difficulty walking. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and she was getting worse, so she was transferred to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin (CHW) in Milwaukee. Doctors there suspected rabies, and Jeanna then told them that she’d been bitten by a bat that she had picked up at church…more than 40 days earlier. A test for the virus confirmed that she had it, which was very, very bad—people infected with the rabies virus who don’t get vaccine shots immediately—before the onset of symptoms—don’t live. Nobody in history had been known to recover from such a situation. That meant Jeanna, whose brain was already swelling, was in grave danger. The doctors at CHW searched in vain for a treatment plan; there wasn’t one. So they had to invent one: With her parents’ approval, they gave Jeanna drugs to protect her nervous system, then put her in a coma and hoped her immune system would “learn” to fight the virus, build up, and eventually win. They tested her spinal fluid to see how she was progressing, and a week later brought her out of the coma…because her immune system had eradicated the virus. She spent the next month in intensive care, followed by therapy to get her brain and muscles back in shape, and within a year she was back in school and even able to drive. She is the first unvaccinated person in history known to have had full-blown rabies and fully recovered. She’s now being studied by some of the world’s leading neurologists, who want to know just how she did it. Asked if she’d ever pick up a live bat again, the ardent animal lover answered, “I would.”
About 25 million meteors hit Earth’s atmosphere every day.
THY WILL BE DONE
There are famous last words, and then there are the last words of the famous. Here are some odd bequests made in the wills of well-known people .
B OB FOSSE. The choreographer and Oscar-winning director of Cabaret died in 1987 and left exactly $378.79 each to 66 people so they could “go out and have dinner on me.” Recipients included Dustin Hoffman, Liza Minelli, Melanie Griffith, and Roy Scheider (who portrayed Fosse in All That Jazz ).
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. When the playwright ( Pygmalion ) died in 1950, he left more than £300,000 to develop a new, more precise English alphabet of 40 letters to replace the current one. (Someone created it, but it never caught on.)
GENE RODDENBERRY. The creator of Star Trek , who died in 1991, arranged for his cremated remains to be scattered in space. And in 1997, they were shot out into space from a Spanish satellite (along with the ashes of 23 other people).
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. It’s been widely reported that when Shakespeare died he willed his wife, Anne Hathaway, his “second-best bed.” Some scholars say it was an insult that he didn’t leave her his best bed. But in the 17th century, a home’s best bed was reserved for guests; a husband and wife slept in the second-best. The note in the will was a sentimental gesture.
HARRY HOUDINI. The famous magician bequeathed his collection of books on magic to the American Society for Psychical Research…on condition that J. Malcolm Bird, an ASPR official whom Houdini hated, resign. Bird refused, so the books went to the Library of Congress. Houdini also had a bronze bust of himself placed on his tomb to guide him back from “the other side.”
DUSTY SPRINGFIELD. The 1960s singer (“Son of a Preacher Man”), who died in 1999, set
Similar Books
