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On 16 February 2016, a blog called Two Droplets appeared and became a social media sensation. Its author claimed to be the wife of a man who had unwittingly fallen victim to a bizarre and unexpected medical anomaly stemming from two droplets of drain cleaner. The blog's writer was anonymous (as was her spouse), and her story began: The narrative advanced to describe an escalation of unexpected damage due to the two droplets incident: According to the author, the condition progressed so severely that amputation was the only available choice. Even then, she said, her husband failed to improve: The single post on the blog concluded with three objectives: First, to remind readers to be grateful for what they had in life, lest a chance encounter with drain cleaner slowly rob them of their health and sanity. The second was a plea for anyone with medical expertise to contact the anonymous family in the hopes of resolving the persistent health issue. The third was an apparent attempt at humor, urging people with plumbing problems to call a plumber rather than use chemical drain cleaners. The ambiguity and lack of clear purpose presented by the post was puzzling. The author stated outright that she sought no handouts for her family's troubles. The only visible comment on the post was attributed to the original author, and she stated her resolve not to name the chemical by which her spouse was purportedly injured (despite the value such a disclosure would present to anyone interested in helping with the medical mystery): The blog post had seven images, none of which led to a hit on a reverse image search engine. If the photographs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) appeared on the internet prior to the Two Droplets blog, they were neither widely distributed nor associated with any other injury or accident. A Facebook and Twitter user shared a link to the post multiple times alongside a claim that the poster was a personal friend, but that user also provided no identifying information: It wasn't long before the post was shared Reddit's r/medicine (a subreddit for medical professionals). One poster pointed out that the story felt incomplete: Another observed that help would be unlikely to materialize, given the vagueness of the claim: Prior to the appearance of Two Droplets, we were unable to find any previous reports of this incident. If either the affected husband or worried wife sought help, their odd tale didn't receive much attention prior to the blog's creation. On 18 February 2016, the author of the above-embedded Facebook post contacted us about the claim. We responded to that individual and received a reply from the blog's purported author, including a photo of the injury. However, that reply included no verified or verifiable information helpful to documenting this report as true.
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