Feeling sluggish

Tweet

This story came to mind after a response from @Juliaacv Once upon a time, several years ago, I had gone away for a weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday. We were staying at a place in Yorkshire where there is beautiful countryside for walking and some of us had opted to go caving. I’m not sure you could ever call caving a popular hobby, but certainly Yorkshire is a real hotspot for this activity. We were crawling along a narrow passageway when we realised another group were approaching from the opposite direction. Luckily there was a narrow passing place so they squeezed in to allow us to pass, and as we wriggled past our birthday person recognised one of the other cavers and called out ‘Hello Slug!’ Of course, relaxing over drinks later, we had to ask why this person was called ‘Slug’ and we were told that it was because he had always been rather slow and sluggish. So much so that in the end he went to the doctor to see if anything could be done about it. And after some investigation, it was revealed that he actually had a duplication of part of his intestine which took a lot of the blood supply, meaning there was less blood available to transport oxygen elsewhere and making him feel tired all the time. Eventually he had the duplicated sections surgically removed, and afterwards surpassed everyone by being super speedy! But naturally the name ‘Slug’ stuck as an ironic nickname. Apparently this ‘interesting’ case was reported in the medical literature. Being curious, I have actually searched the literature to see if I could find this particular case. I didn’t manage to find it, but I did find that duplications of parts of the digestive tract, though unusual, are nowhere near as rare as you might think! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2021.