Doctors are predictably baffled by what would appear to be a medical mystery. Over the last three days, assorted plant leaves and seeds have been continuously popping out from one of the ears of Aman Deep, a 12-year old boy in Faridabad. The sixth standard student has been equally stunned - his ear has "delivered" more than hundred leaves.ENT specialists, and the radiologists who performed a high-resolution CT Scan of the boy's skull on Friday, looked clueless after the test as they sought to find an explanation. The boy's ear poured out two leaves even during the investigation at the diagnostic center here. As the doctors tried to figure out the mystery, others are already attributing it to superstition and something that was beyond the world of medicine and science.
It all started on September 25 when boy was making on his way home after school. As the school van passed by a procession carrying Lord Ganesha idols, he "felt a hot air thump on his right ear felt some irritation". "After I came back home and told my father about it he poured some oil in my ear. I went to sleep, but when I got up in the evening, my right ear started delivering plant leaves," said Aman, a student of St. Peter School in Sector 16.
He was rushed to ENT specialist Dr. Praveen Chawla, who was shocked to see assorted pieces of leaves of the plant species such as ashoka, pipal, paan, tulsi and even banana and seeds of vinca rosea plant coming out of Aman's ear.
"I have had the experience of ear and nose producing stones known as otolith and rhynolith respectively, but nothing like this. I immediately examined his eardrums and other parts of his skull. To my shock, the tympanic membrane had had no marking or bruises and redness, no sign of any trauma or any cavity in his ears," Chawla said.
Not convinced, Chawla took the help of diagnostic center Focus Diagnostics and had a CT Scan of the boy done on Friday. However, to his astonishment, Dr. Deepka Gupta, the senior consultant of the diagnostic center, simply said: "The leaves popping out from boy's ear was an 'out of the medical world phenomenon' that he had come across for the first time in his life. Even during the CT Scan, the boy developed irritations in his ear twice but produced a leaf each time."
Aman's father Sahib Singh - a snack vendor and resident of NIT Faridabad, said he was worried about his son who was now developing anxiety and had got tired of making trips to ENT clinics and the diagnostic center.
Dr. Suresh Vashisth, president of Indian Medical Association (Gurgaon) and senior laproscopic surgeon, termed the development as a superstition or a trick. He said: "Medical science does not mention anything of this kind. It is possible that the boy's ears must have a congregation of assorted leaves collected while swimming in a pool or a pond and these were now pouring out." The boy's father, however, said his son did not know how to swim.
Boy Sprouts Leaves
Boy Sprouts Leaves