Be like Mike, Hit that Pipe!

Michael Phelps

from: Apartment Therapy

Urinary tract infections affect millions of people each year. And in the majority of cases, a quick dose of antibiotics will take care of the problem.

But this wasn’t the case for 20-year-old Brazilian beauty queen Mariana Bridi da Costa, the Miss World finalist who recently had her hands and feet amputated after contracting a severe urinary infection.

“I have seen people get septic from a urinary tract infection that goes untreated, but never amputation,” Dr. Debra Fromer, Chief of the Center for Bladder Prostate and Pelvic Floor Health at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, told FOXNews.com

“This is incredibly rare.” Bridi da Costa fell ill on Dec. 30 and went to a hospital in the Brazilian city of Serra. She was misdiagnosed with kidney stones and sent home.

"They gave her some medicine and sent her home,” her boyfriend Thiago Simoes said. "We took her back to hospital and they said she had a very serious infection. She got more and more sick, and had no blood circulation to her limbs. First she lost her feet, and then on Tuesday she lost both her hands.”  read the whole story at FoxNews.com

Update: As of 1/24 at 2:30 a.m. Mariana Bridi da Costa has passed away. The Espirito Santo State Health Secretariat said in the statement she died from complications related to a generalized infection. It was caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is known to be resistant to multiple kinds of antibiotics. read more.

Amazing photographs taken from the bottom of the ocean. most of these seem from the same class of marine mollusks, or sea slugs. An amazing array of colors and sensory organs awash these sea creatures.

lots more pictures at blog.c77c.net

Adbusters in Berlin are hoping people will see the real side of advertising with paste ups of the photoshop interface on ads depicting a flawless Britney Spears, Leona Lewis, and what looks like Christina Aguilera.

Check out the flickr photoset at Flickr – Epoxy_One

Click to make larger.

BANGKOK — With up to 100,000 dead and one million homeless, aid is slowly making its way to victims of cyclone Nagris in Burma, but the country’s military regime continued Thursday to stall many foreign efforts – says Foreign Aid Welcome, Foreign Aid Workers Not.

THE death toll in cyclone-ravaged Burma could hit 500,000 – more than TWICE the total killed by the Boxing Day Tsunami.

Last night’s warning came as it emerged that 17 Britons, including ex-pats and backpackers, were still missing.

Sources said 200,000 people were already dead or dying.

But the figure could rise to HALF A MILLION through disease and hunger if the nation’s hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta.

That would dwarf the 230,000 deaths across South East Asia in the 2004 catastrophe. [LINK]