A guy in Canada fell asleep in such a way that he developed a serious condition in his leg: blood pooled in the tissue causing swelling and pressure, which can lead to damage to that tissue as well as in the nerves.
So doctors performed a procedure on his leg to ease the pressure, and when they cut him, what did they see?
Green blood!
The man, it turns out, was not a Vulcan, more’s the pity. He was taking a migraine drug which was placing sulfur in his hemoglobin, tinting it green.
He has recovered successfully from the procedure, and the cessation of the drug has also returned his blood to a healthy vermillion.
But I wonder: some Trek fans love to go that extra mile at cons and such. I’m not sure anyone has ever had their ears bobbed to get them pointy, but is it so crazy to speculate that some will take this pill to make their blood more verdant?
It may not seem, well, logical, but as one Vulcan famously said, "Logic is little tweeting bird chirping in meadow. Logic is wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad."
June 8th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Sulfur in the hemoglobin? It’s THE DEVIL’s fault.
J/P=?
P.S. regarding the Creation Museum, check out this story
June 8th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Okay. that is more than a little creepy — joining that toxic gas emitting corpse from a few years ago.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:07 am
In fact, someone has had theirs ears, uh, Vulcanized. You should check out the Trekkies documentary. It’s both fascinating and very, very disturbing.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Ear pointing is fairly common in the body mod community. Modblog (warning: nsfw, nsfsqueamish, nsfeasily-traumatized) http://modblog.bmezine.com will provide plenty of examples of would-be Vulcans and Elves. And other ear mods that would make van Gogh drop his jaw.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:02 am
what I find amazing is that there was a true scientific explanation for a Vulcan’s green blood. Obviously the planet Vulcan being such an active planet it would be easy to assume the environment and possibly many of the flora and fauna would have elevated levels of sulfur. Maybe even to the extent of sulfur replacing other elements in the body… O2 or N2. eh?
June 8th, 2007 at 11:14 am
The green blood condition is known with the name sulfhaemoglobinaemia. Apparently there have been green-blooded people earlier as such name has been coined.
PS. There’s nothing strange about corpses emitting toxic gases. Living people do that all the time.
June 8th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I remember seeing an “I Dream of Genie” episode where a few *ahem* good-ole-boys were going to cut open the austronauts to see if they were really space men (they were going to look to see if their blood was green). I vividly remember some people in my locality (the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia) actually believing that was a legitimate test.
Mr. Paradox,
Check out my blog, and PZ Meyers for some other interesting things about the Fairy Tale Museum. One point of interest, they’re trying to hire a geologist.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
As far as I know, you can’t merely fall asleep in such a way – you will wake up and shift positions before any damage is done.
You can, however, fall into a drugged stupor and get the same result, as a late friend of mine did many years ago. His calf was sliced open on each side to relieve the pressure, and it took a long time to recover, and was accompanied by a lot of pain (due to the nerve damage, not the cutting).
Perhaps this migraine medication caused him to pass out in that position as well as tinting his blood.
June 9th, 2007 at 12:14 am
There are animals that have blood based on copper. Crabs in particular have hemocyanin, and their blood is blue not green. I was also thinking with copper prices through the roof, lets hope that Spock doesn’t need a blood transfusion, and lets hope thieves don’t steal his blood to sell to a scrap yard.
June 9th, 2007 at 3:00 am
He could also have been the possessed Ed monster from Evil Dead II.
June 9th, 2007 at 4:07 am
‘m just confused that the BA has put a photo of ‘ToSeek’ on his blog….
June 10th, 2007 at 5:41 am
Interesting… That means I could possibly have had green blood for about 10yrs, until I changed medications…
Damn migraines.