Medical Journal Published Case of Man Who Had Cross Tattooed on Neck, 5 Months Later it's Mysteriously Vanished, Replaced By "Aggressive Neurotic Ulcer"

Matt West. Shutterstock Images.

ARS – A 20-year-old man in China may be anxiously reassessing his chances of eternal damnation after the cross he had tattooed on his neck inexplicably vanished after five months and was replaced by an aggressive necrotic ulcer and grave inflammation. The case is so strange that doctors say it "expands the spectrum of tattoo-associated pathology."

In an uncanny case report published Thursday in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, the man's doctors noted the multiple ways in which his lesion was striking. First, they could find no trace of an infection. The pigment used for the tattoo, which was red, had disappeared from his skin, leaving just scarring behind in places not yet covered by the ulcer. This isn't entirely unusual; in normal cases of people having a bad reaction to a tattoo, pigment has been known to migrate into lesions or lymph nodes. But in this case, there was no sign of the red ink, even with deeper digging.

When people's bodies reject tattoos, the abnormal immune reactions usually stay in the upper layers of tissue, and they almost never cause tissue death. But the man's lesion went deep and was clearly an invasive, crusty, bleeding necrotic ulcer. Moreover, doctors could also see that his neck was swollen on either side of the lesion. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed that large masses had formed on both sides of the ulcer and below it. The masses were all in the ballpark of 4 cm by 3 cm, and they were eclipsing his jugular veins. Subsequent scans with enhanced computed tomography showed the internal jugular veins on both sides of his neck had formed clots.

I was going to post the picture of this man's neck wound at the top of the blog, but I didn't want anybody fainting at their phone. I know some people have weird reactions to that type of stuff. It's by far not the craziest wound I've ever seen. But it's a little jarring. So here's the link to a tweet. You've been warned.

Sounds like God, possibly Jesus, whoever had time that day, is sick and tired of people using his likeness for clout. Either that, or we've identified satan reincarnate. Or it's just a freak accident that has nothing to do with any of that. But the first two explanations are much more gripping.

I will say, for the amount of religious jokes I've made on the internet, the number of confirmation classes I skipped for hockey games, how frequently I covet neighbor's wives... after seeing this, I sure as heck won't be getting a cross tattooed anywhere on my body. Not even if it makes me look really, really cool. 

PYMCA/Avalon. Getty Images.

Poor guy though. It's one thing to have an unexplainable lesion on your neck. Having any unexplainable bodily occurrence, no matter how small, is a scary thing. Earlier this year I had some tightness in my chest. It wasn't painful, but it was constant enough that it was starting to scare me a bit. I went to my doctor multiple times. He kept telling me it was nothing. I still wasn't convinced, so I went to a cardiologist to get my heart looked at. It was fine. Eventually it went away. But there was a moment there I thought I was dying. I can't imagine if I had good reason to think my "condition" was a result of God being fucking pissed at me. 

Keep your eyes on this man, China. I'm a little worried the devil might just crawl out of that thing one day. He could be using this man as a vessel of some sort. I guess it could also be Jesus. That neck wound did come from a cross after all. But as awesome as it would be if Jesus turned out to be Chinese, that sure doesn't look like a Jesus hole.