Cruel but maybe not that Unusual

(Be warned that I am going through my “blog” section on Palm – where I’ve put things that I wanted to blog about over the pat year but never quite got around to it – until now – when I am feverishly trying to meet my newly-assigned annual quota. This one is from September.)
A 31-year old Chinese woman is about to undergo several operations in an attempt to remove the first of 26 needles (or 23, depending on which reports you read) found embedded in her body. The theory is that they were placed there by her family, probably her grandparents, around the time of her birth because they were upset she was not a body.
The needles had not seemingly caused any distress to Luo Cuifen – until she sought treatment for blood in her urine. In the routine tests that followed, the needles were discovered. Some had penetrated vital organs – lungs, liver, kidney. They also found three pieces of one needle embedded in her brain.
So how to remove them? A team of 23 doctors was working on that - but it was considered that it would be a long, complicated procedure requiring a number of operations – the first of which would be provided free of charge by the hospital. It was estimated it would cost 170,000 yuan (equivalent at that time to US$22,500).
A search on Google revealed no follow-up to this story in the following months so there’s no news on whether Luo Cuifen is now needle-free.