Foreign Body Follies

C'mon Now, No Way That Was In There

No proper accounting of my medical career would be complete without a mention of the area of Pathology that deals with so-called foreign bodies. It’s that part of the field that makes you go, “Ok, now I’ve seen it all.” While I didn’t actually see it all, I saw enough of it to know I didn’t want to see it all.

Might as well jump right in with both feet and start with unnatural things extracted from down under, objects that had somehow entered the exit, rushing headlong on a one way street. Such phallic lovelies, ostensibly after a big Saturday night, would hang out in the lab after their extraction, awaiting my professional attention on Monday.

“Hey Johnny, I sent you something over the weekend,” whispered the general surgeon.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“Vibrator. Think I’m gonna get sued.”

“Sorry to hear that. Why?”

“He didn’t want it removed … just wanted fresh batteries.”

One of the challenges was pretending to be amused by colleagues with a burning desire to be funny, but no measurable sense of humor. Kinda pitiful, really. Hope they have a good support group.

By its very nature, Pathology is necessarily grotesque, but with the proliferation of CSI shows and gripping homicidal dramas like Dexter, folks are more acclimated to the horror of it all. Not sure if that’s a good thing, but if it makes me seem less ghoulish, I’ll take it.

Foreign bodies come in all shapes and sizes of course … crowbars and deck screws in forearms and foreheads … nickels and dimes in toddler tummies, English peas and marbles in ears, noses and throats, you name it. But nothing has quite the snickering notoriety as the items lost to the anorectal realm.

Probably the most common object to slip the grip and slide away into the dark Nethers is your friendly neighborhood Vibrator. Easy to see why … it’s handy, electronically dynamic and contoured for forward progress.

But it’s really not its fault. I blame the lube, which is criminally slippery. How in the world is anybody supposed to hold onto something with such a small coefficient of friction. It’s ridiculous. And how is there not a law mandating a Retrieval Leash on these things? There’s a law for everything else. I guess some sex toys are just more equal than others.

Come to think of it, a tether would imply forethought, which really isn’t a thing. It’s all about the moment I suppose. The Vaseline jar sent to the lab that one time sharply illustrates how powerful the urge to get something up there can really be. I mean, this container is rectangular … as in not round. C’mon Doc, you can’t say rectangular in polite company, just stop it.

Just to be safe, let’s go back to round. Or maybe round-ish … as in large baking potato, which was, per the protocol, waiting patiently for me in the lab on Monday. Starting my week off on a decidedly starchy note, I noticed the hapless spud had some small bites out of it where the surgeon had attempted to pull it out with biopsy pinchers through the proctoscope.

Needless to say, he could not overcome the considerable forces of veggie suction and had to open the poor chap up to remove it surgically. Maybe the scopes need some sort of corkscrew attachment for such randy occasions.

I think my favorite part of the whole sordid affair was the patients’ comical explanations for their particular predicament … whether it be a sexual device, spontaneous jar or bulbous tuber from the garden …

“I heard it was good for your prostate.”

Or …

“My doctor told me to try it.”

Or, my personal favorite …

“I fell on it.”

Yeah, and I flapped my arms and flew to work.

Sometimes the foreign body goes undetected for awhile, only to cause trouble later. The surgeon had sent me an especially gnarly, two foot segment of large intestine that had curled up on itself into a rock-hard, fibrotic mess of a mass. His working diagnosis was “bowel obstruction of unknown etiology.” It felt like cancer in my hands.

Imagine my surprise during the lengthy dissection to find embedded in the wall of the angry colon, this little guy …

My first thought was, how in the name of Adephagia does somebody swallow a bread bag clip? Talk about wolfing your food. This all happened during the holidays, so my best guess was that it had fallen silently into the Thanksgiving dressing, unbeknownst to the cook. Or the wolf.

Or perhaps somebody didn’t like somebody and slyly planted it in their stroganoff. Or maybe he lost a bet and had to eat the whole loaf of bread … bag, clip and all. Either way, Mrs. Baird’s backflipping in her grave.

I guess that’s enough ridiculousness for one article. Today’s short list of freaky foreigners barely scratches the surface, so if y’all would like more of these tawdry tales, let me know in the comments!

~~ j ~~

“Rice is great if you’re really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.”

~~ Mitch Hedberg