If you make it through life without ever getting sick or injured, you may be entirely fictional. It’s nearly impossible to live without needing medical help at some point. If you’re lucky, you’ll only need minor help. 

For more in-depth issues, medical science has all manner of treatments and procedures that may be able to help you. Some are simple, some are complex and a handful are so weird they sound like they have to be totally fictional. But they’re not!

10. A Bogota Bag Involves Sewing a Urine Bag Over an Open Wound

If someone told you that you needed a Bogota Bag you’d be forgiven for thinking it was either a horrible euphemism or the nickname for something used to smuggle drugs. In reality, the Bogota Bag is a medical procedure used to help close over stomach wounds.

It’s not unheard of that a patient’s stomach can essentially burst after certain procedures. Closing the ensuing wound can prove to be extremely difficult. There are various methods such as using a mesh or packing the abdominal cavity but they can all be risky and lead to further complications. The Bogota Bag, so named because it was first tried in Bogota, has proven to be one of the safest methods.

If a patient has an open stomach wound, doctors can take a sterile plastic bag, often a bag used to collect urine, and cut it open. The bag is then placed over the wound like a shield and sewn to the skin. The patient will have a fully exposed hole covered over by this plastic bag sewn on top of it that can allow the stomach wound to heal underneath or can at least allow the wound to remain covered and sterile until doctors are able to properly treat the cause of the damage and prevent further injury.

9. Rectal Prolapses Can Be Treated With Sugar

Few words in the English language can inspire more discomfort than “rectal prolapse.” The idea is not a pleasant one, and the reality is even less so. Any number of reasons including issues with muscles or ligaments can cause a patient’s rectum to slide out of place and protrude from the body rather than remaining inside as it’s supposed to. This can lead to dangerous complications if it’s not resolved.

In some cases, surgery may be required to fix the problem but not always. In fact, there’s a method that is recommended for a person to try at home if this was a onetime sort of deal you’d like to fix on your own. And, let’s be honest, most people probably want to fix this on their own.

The doctor-approved method for repairing a rectal prolapse at home requires sugar. If you are unable to use a gloved hand to gently push a prolapse back inside, sprinkle it with granulated sugar and wait 15 minutes. The sugar won’t harm the tissue but it will absorb moisture. In doing so, it will cause the prolapse to shrink and make it easier to push back into place.

8. Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis Involves Sewing a Blind Patient’s Tooth Onto Their Eyeball

The term osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis doesn’t roll off the tongue very well. Thankfully, it’s not something most of us need to know but if you ever require the procedure, you better believe you’re going to remember it. It involves sticking a tooth in your eye.

Known as tooth-in-eye surgery, the procedure can restore vision to those who suffer corneal blindness. A patient’s tooth is removed and doctors drill a hole through it. In the hole a small, plastic lens is placed. The tooth is planted in the patient’s cheek so that tissue can start growing over it and it can develop a blood supply. 

Skin from the mouth is sewn to the eye, then the tooth is sewn to the surface of the eyeball with the lens in the correct position. The new lens functions the way your old eye was supposed to. Patients who have undergone the procedure went from totally blind to having 20/20 vision.

7. Laser Surgery Can Turn Brown Eyes Blue

Laser eye surgery to improve vision has been around for years now and most people are familiar with it. But it’s not the only kind of laser eye surgery you can get. Plastic surgery is also an option if you don’t like your eye color. 

For those who have brown eyes, and it only works with brown eyes, there’s a procedure to burn away that pigment with a laser and leave your eyes devoid of pigment which makes them appear blue. The process takes just a few seconds but will require a couple of weeks to show off the results. You’ll also have to go south to get it done as it’s not approved in the United States. 

There’s also a second option for eye color changes in the form of iris implants. This is supposed to be for people with iris damage, but colored silicone replacements can be surgically implanted, permanently changing eye color. They’re known to cause a host of side effects and complications, though.

6. InstaBreasts or Vacation Breasts Give a Patient Bigger Breasts for a Day

Breast implants remain one of the most common cosmetic surgery procedures in the world. There are around 300,000 performed each year in the United States. The procedure costs, on average, about $4,500 and that’s not including the cost of anesthetic or certain other expenses. 

For those who aren’t willing to commit to the procedure and maybe just want to take augmented breasts for a test run, there’s a procedure called InstaBreasts, also known as Vacation Breasts. It offers a temporary idea of what you might get if you went ahead with permanent implants. 

The process lasts for just 24 hours and still comes with a price tag that ranges from $2,500 to $3,500. A doctor will inject a saline solution directly into the breast tissue causing them to immediately swell. Your body will absorb the liquid within 24 hours and pee it out.

5. Rotationplasty Turns Your Foot Into Your Knee

The name “rotationplasty” doesn’t sound ominous or odd at first, but the reality of the procedure is quite perplexing, especially at first glance. The procedure is most often used to treat bone cancer, generally in and around the knees of children. 

The knee, the bottom of the femur and the upper portion of the tibia are entirely removed to excise the tumors. The lower portion of the leg is turned right around, a full 180 degrees and then attached to the rest of the femur. The ankle becomes the new knee, and the foot is on backwards, where you’d normally expect the knee to be.

Once the surgery is complete, a prosthetic can be attached that allows the patient to walk more or less as normal since they now have a functional knee again. 

4. EPR Involves Removing a Patient’s Blood and Replacing it with Cold Saline

Leaning heavily into what looks like science fiction is EPR or emergency preservation and resuscitation. The procedure is a kind of suspended animation meant to give doctors more time to save a patient in a time sensitive emergency situation. 

Like similar ideas in fiction, a patient is forced into a state of hypothermia and their organs are slowed down. That means that their body has to be cooled down to about 10C to 15C or 50F to 59F. This is done by literally replacing the patient’s blood with freezing saline.

The process can extend the time doctors have to operate by up to two hours. It’s only done in the case of a severely traumatic injury, such as a gunshot wound, when the patient has already lost half of their blood and their heart has stopped.  Normally, patients only have a 5% survival rate in conditions like these.

The cooling shuts down the patient’s brain, preserves the organs and they are more or less dead at that moment. But they can be operated on and an injury that would normally only give doctors minutes to repair can now be operated on for those two hours. 

After surgery, the patient gets blood pumped back into their body and their temperature is raised.

The procedure was first tried on a human patient in 2019.

3. Defecography Requires You To Get an X-Ray While You Poop

For doctors to gain a fuller understanding of a patient’s overall condition imaging is often necessary. You’ve got your CAT scans and your MRIs and your X-rays. And then you’ve got your defecography.

Defecography is done with a certain kind of x-ray or MRI and its focus is entirely on how you poop, particularly how your muscles work during the process. Unlike a traditional X-ray where you just hold still and get an image taken, for this one you need to be a little more active. Which is to say it has to be done while you’re in the process of defecating, hence the name. 

As you can, but probably don’t want to, imagine, this is a little more in-depth than most imaging. And it gets worse. They don’t want to watch you poop actual poop for this exam. Instead, they pack you with a barium paste. It has the same consistency as poop, which we’re not going to question right now, but because it’s barium, it shows up easily in scans. 

Once you’re full, you get to sit on a special scanning toilet and let loose the dogs of war. The scans taken will show how all your various organs and muscles work during the process and ideally will aid in diagnosing whatever condition brought you to a doctor in the first place. 

2. The Krukenberg Procedure Can Turn Your Forearm into a Pincer

If you were to get into an accident and lose your hand, you might expect that your options about what to do next are limited. Maybe the hand could be reattached in certain circumstances, but what if that’s not an option? Most of us would probably consider a prosthetic as the next choice. Hand prosthetics have existed since the 16th century and modern ones can be quite advanced. 

There is another option that is less well known for patients who have lost a hand. The Krukenberg procedure dates back to the early 1900s, and it involves turning someone’s forearm into a lobster claw-like pincer.

The procedure is rarely done and typically only performed on patients who cannot afford a prosthetic but still need their hands for work. It allows for some minimal dexterity because it separates the arm bones, the ulna and the radius, to create two appendages like long fingers. The patient can move them and grip things, though obviously not as strongly as they could with a functional hand. One of the perceived benefits is that the patient retains sensation which, in some cases, is preferred to having a prosthesis. 

1. Pokertox is a Botox Procedure to Hide a Gambler’s Tells

Everyone knows about Botox these days, that procedure is old news. Less well known, although essentially just a niche version of the exact same thing, is Pokertox. It’s 100% a gimmick that appeals to a very small segment of the population but that doesn’t mean it can’t make someone a few bucks.

The idea of a poker face is something anyone familiar with gambling is aware of. Poker is a game of skill that requires understanding not just the cards you’re dealt but, oftentimes, the people you’re playing against. If you’re bluffing your way through a game, you need a solid poker face so that you don’t give away any clues. But what if you can’t help it? What if you have a very expressive face?

Pokertox is a procedure to inject Botox into your forehead so that your face is a little too firm and frozen to express any emotion, thus making you a better poker player. Is there any scientific validity to the idea? Who’s to say? But it still exists.

2020 is finally coming to an end, and thanks to a plethora of horrible events, the conclusion of this year is something to look forward to. Everything from COVID-19 and contested presidential elections to massive wildfires and the breakout of wars across the globe has made 2020 a year most would like to forget.

That said, the year wasn’t a complete and total mess. While COVID dominated the news, good things continued to happen. This list highlights the ten best parts of an otherwise horrible year and are presented in no particular order.

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10 Multiple COVID-19 Vaccines Were Developed

COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill as countries closed businesses and enforced stay-at-home orders. The virus impacted every aspect of the economy. By December, it killed more than 1.5 million of the 67+ million people infected with the virus.

Thanks to the focus of money, time, and attention to the problem, several pharmaceutical companies managed to create a vaccine. While it won’t go into widespread distribution in 2020, it will make its way around the world in 2021.

As of December, two primary vaccines were developed by Phizer/BioNTech and Moderna, though AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Novavax continue their Phase 3 clinical trials. The vaccine developed by Phizer/BioNTech was found to be 90% effective in preventing COVID-19, while Moderna’s vaccine is 94.1% effective.

On December 8th, Margaret Keenan, a 91-year-old British woman, was vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, making her the first person in the world to receive it following approval. She is only the first of billions of people who will take the injection, but it’s a massive win in the war against the virus.^[1]

9 A Possible Control For Malaria Was Discovered

Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases on the planet, and nearly half the world’s population lives in areas at risk of transmission. In 2016, malaria caused around 216 million clinical episodes, leading to the deaths of 445,000 people.

It’s often the number one killer in the places it runs rampant, and the World Health Organization estimated that 90% of deaths in 2016 resulted from malaria infections in the WHO Africa Region.

Measures to control mosquito populations have run the gamut of scientific advancement. Ongoing efforts to genetically alter mosquitos are underway, and other measures include the use of pesticides and other means to stop the pests from transmitting malaria to humans.

A new discovery in May could finally offer up a means of taking the fight to malaria directly. A team of Kenyan and British scientists discovered Microsporidia MB, a parasitic microbe that blocks mosquitos from carrying malaria.

The discovery of Microsporidia MB may pave the way in controlling the spread of malaria, making it a significant discovery. Research is underway in developing the discovery into a viable means of controlling the spread of the disease.^[2]

8 The #MeToo Movement Scored A Huge Victory

The #MeToo movement began in 2006 on MySpace, but it wasn’t until 2020 that the movement achieved a truly significant victory. That’s when widespread accusations of sexual-abuse that exposed Harvey Weinstein finally came to fruition with a conviction in February. Weinstein’s legal troubles pushed women from all over the entertainment industry to speak out.

Alyssa Milano posted on Twitter, “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” The attention she brought to the situation brought the #MeToo movement to the forefront of sexual assault and sexual harassment in and out of the entertainment industry.

It took a few years, but the #MeToo movement achieved a huge success in 2020 when Weinstein was finally convicted for numerous crimes. On March 11th, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison, which is something his victims believed would never happen.

Weinstein’s conviction resulted from a charge of rape that occurred in a New York City hotel in 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on another woman in 2006. While the full range of charges and the massive list of victims didn’t result in additional convictions, his imprisonment achieved a victory over a powerful man whose assaults went unchallenged for decades.^[3]

7 Africa Was Declared Free Of Wild Polio

Most people in the west don’t give polio a second thought, thanks to its eradication in many western nations by 1979. Unfortunately, the virus continued in various parts of the world where vaccination became difficult.

In countries like Nigeria, hundreds of people contracted the virus, with 2006 spiking to 1,100 cases, so worldwide eradication was and is ongoing. While wild polio remains a problem in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, it has finally been eradicated in Africa, which is a monumental achievement following decades of work.

The polio vaccine was developed by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1952, and by ’61, the oral polio vaccine came to market. Vaccination efforts were widespread in developed countries, but several less-developed nations in Asia and Africa remained affected by the poliovirus.

Immunization campaigns were launched by the likes of Nelson Mandela, who helped mobilize the “Kick Polio Out of Africa” campaign in 1996. In that year alone, 75,000 children across the continent were paralyzed by the virus, but it’s finally been defeated. 2020 marks the end of the wild poliovirus, which will no longer infect the children of Africa.^[4]

6 Sudan Finally Achieved Peace

The Republic of Sudan has been embroiled in conflict for decades, resulting from linguistic, cultural, and religious differences as well as divisions in political power. The Sudan Civil War erupted in 1983 and wasn’t settled until 2005, but the conflict didn’t truly end.

Sudan was ruled by a dictatorial government led by Omar al-Bashir between 1989 and 2019 when he was ousted via a successful coup d’état.

Throughout al-Bashir’s rule, Sudan was embroiled in human rights abuses and was a sponsor of global terrorism. Sudan’s role in the War in the Darfur region resulted in between 300,000 and 400,000 casualties. The government operated under Sharia law, but that changed, making it possible to achieve peace.

After the ouster of al-Bashir, Sudan formed a new secular government. By August, several major groups signed a preliminary peace deal. Sudan’s People’s Liberation Movement-North came to the table for the first time alongside two factions from the western region of Darfur and one from the south.

The conflicts that were started by Sudan’s former dictator were brought to an end. After decades of fighting, Sudan finally achieved peace. As a new democracy rose in North Africa, peace became the law of the land.^[5]

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5 Multiple Successes In Israeli-Arab Peace

While U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has been relentlessly attacked by the media, it has achieved significant gains in the realm of Middle-East peace. Trump’s administration worked as the intermediary for two significant treaties that normalized relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

The Middle-East conflict has been ongoing for decades, but there hasn’t been a normalization of relations between Israel and a Middle-East nation since Jordan in 1994. Before that, Egypt signed a deal in 1979, but 26 years passed before another country stepped up.

The United Arab Emirates and Israel signed the historic Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement on August 13th, 2020, making it the third Arab nation to formally normalize its relations with Israel. On September 15th, Bahrain did the same, when both countries officially signed their respective agreements brokered by the United States.

Efforts continue to bring more Arab nations to the negotiating table, as most have yet to recognize and normalize relations with Israel. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are among the dozens of nations that have yet to negotiate a similar agreement.^[6]

4 The Falkland Islands Were Declared Landmine-Free

In 1982, the United Kingdom and Argentina engaged in a 10-week-long undeclared war. The conflict resulted from a dispute over two British dependent territories: the Falkland Islands and the South Sandwich Islands. The Falklands War was relatively short, but it was intense, and one of the outcomes was the widespread use of landmines.

Landmines are one of the worst devices employed in warfare due to their wholly indiscriminate and deadly impact on whoever is unlucky enough to trigger one. Minefields from wars fought long ago remain in place for years, and the civilian population often pays the price with the loss of limbs and lives when mines are triggered.

Most countries have since signed treaties limiting or abolishing their use, but many minefields remain. The Falkland Islands became the home of some 30,000 landmines from the war, and it wasn’t until 1998 that a ratified treaty required their removal. Dangerous demining operations were carried out by hand and continued until October 2020.

The government finally declared the Falkland Islands to be mine-free, with the last site, Gypsy Cove, finalizing its last detonation. The beaches of Gypsy Cove had been off-limits since 1982, but they were finally free of the deadly devices, 38 years after they were first placed.^[7]

3 Dog Adoptions Soared, Thanks To COVID

It’s difficult to find anything good in the COVID-19 pandemic, and while the virus has impacted everyone’s lives negatively, some good has come of it. Shelter adoptions are on the rise, thanks to the void many people feel from being trapped in their homes for the bulk of the year.

The adoption of dogs has significantly increased throughout the United States, as locked-in folks find that they have the time and energy to bring a pet into their lives. The pandemic has created a nice boom for breeders, but it’s also increased pet adoptions from shelters, saving those animals from being destroyed.

Some shelters have seen a doubling of the number of adoptions they usually get in a single day. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles saw between ten and 13 adoptions a day in late June.

For the first time in a long time, the “inventory” of shelter animals is running out, and people are being placed on waiting lists to get their hands on a puppy or adult dog. Every animal rescued from a kill shelter is a life saved, so it seems that a little good has come from our exile.^[8]

2 We Found Ways To Adapt And Overcome

COVID-19 may have come along and completely upended our lives, but people have learned to adapt and overcome for the most part. That’s not to say we’ve defeated the virus, but when people found themselves locked inside their homes for months at a time, we found ways to make it work.

Working from home went from being impossible in most businesses to being the norm, and that’s unlikely to change even after the pandemic ends. Things like drive-in movie theaters returned, and drive-in concerts joined in on the fun to become a thing.

People and companies with the know-how to do so changed their production efforts and began making masks for people all over the world, and many continue to do so on a regular basis. Liquor companies began making hand sanitizer to make up the shortfalls, and people from all over the world did what they could to help one another from afar.

While the pandemic may have been entirely negative, at least we found a way to adapt and overcome some of the virus’ impacts on our lives. It hasn’t been easy, but that hasn’t stopped hundreds of thousands of people from doing whatever they could to help others.^[9]

1 The Second-Largest Ebola Outbreak Ended

Because of COVID-19, it’s easy for most folks to overlook a smaller pandemic, and one ran rampant through half the year. The second-largest Ebola outbreak began in August 2018, and the Democratic Republic of Congo fought against it well into 2020.

Ebola is far deadlier than COVID-19, but it is possible to stop its spread, as it is, fortunately, not an airborne virus. Still, it’s incredibly contagious. Whenever it arises in Africa, it often kills a large number of people before it dies out. The Kivu outbreak that lasted two years infected 3,453 people, killing 2,280 of them.

The World Health Organization and volunteers from various agencies descended upon the DRC to fight the outbreak. By February 2020, the cases dwindled down to zero. Unfortunately, three cases emerged 52 days later, and the fight continued well into June.

On June 25th, the pandemic was declared “over,” bringing a two-year nightmare to an end. The largest Ebola outbreak occurred in West Africa between 2014 and 2016. That outbreak resulted in more than 11,000 deaths. Since that outbreak, the development of the rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine has helped to limit the spread to more vulnerable populations.

The vaccine is 97.5% effective at preventing transmission of Ebola, but distribution efforts have been hampered, making widespread vaccination difficult in the region.^[10]

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