Everyone had thought she just had a nervous habit, not a condition…
Over the past two years, 23-year-old mother, Sophie Cox, lost over 80 pounds, dropped six dress sizes, and developed the urge to vomit every time she ate. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so she decided to go to the doctor.
Initially, her doctors ran tests to see if Cox had gallstones or stomach cancer – but the results were negative. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her.
A month later, Cox went to the hospital to have an endoscopy. The doctors inserted a small camera into her stomach to search for the cause of the problem.
Cox had a 14-pound, 30-centimeter large hairball lodged in her stomach. The mass had collected over years and years until it became too large for Cox’s body to break down and inhibited her body from properly nourishing or hydrating itself.
That was when Cox remembered: Ever since she was a toddler, Cox had a habit of pulling out her own hair and eating it. The nervous tick stopped after a while in her youth, so Cox’s parents soon forgot about it.
But about six years ago, Cox realized she had started doing it again – this time, in her sleep.
She would wake up with bald patches on her head and strands of hair sticking to her lips; she had pulled out her hair in her sleep and promptly placed it in her mouth to eat. “Friends would notice and slap my hands away from my head, but they thought it was a habit, not a condition,” Cox admits. “If I repressed the urge during the day I’d only pull out more clumps at night.”
The doctors diagnosed Cox with trichophagia, the obsessive compulsion to eat one’s own hair, often called “Rapunzel syndrome.” She was scheduled for a trichobezoar-removal surgery about four months later.
Although Cox woke up feeling “sore and groggy” after the procedure, she already felt better than she had when she had the hairball collecting in her stomach. “I cried with relief when it was gone,” she said, “I’m just so thankful the hairball was found before it was too late.”
