The things women do for beauty--or, beware the bikini wax

The things women do for beauty--or, beware the bikini wax

Tara C. Smith, an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, University of Iowa, creates a post with serious ewww factor.

Here's the background: A woman with untreated Type 1 diabetes (making her susceptible to infections) gets a bikini wax. ... She comes down with a fever, swelling and pain where the bikini wax works its magic, waited another week to find a doctor. ... and ...

She presented to the ER with not only "grossly swollen" external genitalia, and pain so extreme that she had to be put under general anesthetic just so her physician could perform a gynecologic exam. She was so swollen that, according to the legend to Figure 1 (which you can find online, as the article is freely available), "she was unable to pass urine, and the vaginal space was obliterated by edema."

Ouch.

The patient also had a rash over her chest and neck. From these clinical signs and the subsequent isolation of S. pyogenes from a urine culture and sample of the vaginal discharge, she was diagnosed with streptococcal cellulitis and toxic shock syndrome, and was also found to have an active herpes simplex virus type 1 infection.

[...]

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ....

[via pharyngula. Thanks for the intro to Dr. Smith and aetiology, a blog that discusses "causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease and other phenomena."]