Chinese doctors are baffled by a bizarre, five-inch growth on an elderly woman’s head. They aren’t able to explain what it is exactly, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to a unicorn’s horn! 

It all started when ‘Unicorn Woman’ Liang Xiuzhen developed a mole on her head about seven or eight years ago. “My mother complained about this mole-like growth on her head that itched all the time,” said her son Wang Chaojun. “We found ways to cure her itch using traditional Chinese medicine, and then left it be.”

But matters got out of hand a couple of years ago, when a tiny horn-like mass erupted out of the mole. It was quite small up until this February, when Liang accidentally broke it. Since then, a new horn has been rapidly growing in its place, now measuring a whopping five inches in length. “Now the horn hurts my mother and prevents her from sleeping. It also bleeds from time to time,” Wang Chaojun said.

87-year-old Liang’s photographs are now all over the internet, and doctors are clueless about what to do with her grotesque horn. Some have diagnosed it to be a ‘cornu cutaneum’ – a keratinous skin tumor that looks like a horn. Surgery is the only option to have it removed, but Wang Chaojun is skeptical.

“My mother is old, and the horn is on her head which is a very sensitive area,” he said. “I’m not confident (of) surgery. If something goes wrong, it would be terrible.”

This story reminds me of another perplexing skin growth we heard of last year – a woman named Shanaya who had fingernails sprouting out of hair follicles all over her body. In both cases, these poor women seem to be in a lot of pain.

Liang Xiuzhen’s case is rare, but not unique. A few years ago, we posted a list of people around the world growing horns out of their heads.

via The Mirror