Word: scalped
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...with thinning dark hair, sits in the doctor's chair, his scalp red, scarred, infected. Dermatologist Marvin Lepaw and an aide hover over him. Slowly, methodically, using magnifying glass and tweezers, they pluck out one hair after another. The agonizing scene in Lepaw's Hicksville, N.Y., office is not an isolated incident. Doctors round the country are now trying to undo the dangerous fallout from yet another quack treatment for baldness: the implanting of synthetic fibers into the scalp...
...head of hair, perhaps 20,000 desperate men and women have spent up to $6,000 apiece at so-called implant clinics. The hair is really thousands of colored strands of polyester or modacrylic fiber, usually in bunches of three to eight strands.* The fibers are threaded into the scalp by needle or forced in by air guns and sometimes anchored below the skin with knots...
Initial patient euphoria is short-lived. Within weeks, the fibers start breaking and falling out. Remaining shafts become centers of inflammation as the body tries to reject the foreign material and invading bacteria. Says a 50-year-old real estate broker who underwent an implant: "Your entire scalp feels spongy, with a layer of pus underneath. The bleeding and itching drive you crazy. You wake up and find the pillow covered with blood." Natural hair may fall out too. Correcting the damage can take years. The fibers must be removed, and antibiotics taken to control infection. Some patients may require...
...system keeps track of the baby's heart rate, and an electrically wired belt across the mother's abdomen notes uterine contractions. Electrodes are attached to the baby's head to get an electrocardiogram. Blood samples for analysis may be drawn from the baby's scalp. The object: to detect fetal problems early enough for physicians to intervene. The U.S. spends some $80 million a year on this effort, and the fetal death rate in the U.S. has in fact declined since electronic monitoring was introduced in the mid-1960s, but there is little evidence linking...
...novel about the Sioux, Hill has perpetrated the Plains Indian myth. She has not shown Americans the real, native American, the Indians who were the same in 1750 as they were in 1410. Instead she has only given Americans what they have idolized since they helped create him: the scalp-wielding, horse-riding savage...