Holy noodles!

Everyone who has worked in an ED for any amount of time is going to accumulate stories about people who enjoy putting various objects in their god-given orifices to gain whatever thrill it offers. I cannot imagine the full extent of who is stuffing what where on any given night because in the ED we only encounter these people on the occasion that whatever they decided to introduce into their bodies becomes impossible for them to retrieve at home. I estimate that we only encounter a small sampling of the foreign body inserters since I imagine the larger population manages to retain control over their artificial sexual supplements. The “victims” often show up in the ER complaining of abdominal pain, but it is rare that they’ll admit to the triage nurse that the source of their abdominal discomfort is an object in their rectum or vagina that never was meant to be in there. In fact, they are often reluctant to confide in their doctor what is creating their distress. Instead they will often wait until an abdominal X-ray reveals a large bottle of distilled water resting not so comfortably in their bowels. They will feign surprise “oh my! how did that get in there?” or claim a random accident “I slipped in the shower and fell on it”, or, my personal favorite, they blame someone else “my wife stuck it there – I didn’t know what she was doing!” OK. How the hell would someone NOT know how a 1 liter water bottle got lodged up their ass? And how does falling on a water bottle magically make it fly up their butt? I have fallen on a lot of things in my life, but they didn’t end up up there. And finally, what the hell was going on that they lacked the awareness that their wife was shoving a large inanimate object where the sun doesn’t shine???
Anyway. My favorite story was actually treated by a friend of mine who saw a patient that had accomplished an amazing (by some standard) feat. He had succeeded in shoving about 20cm of a pool noodle into his rear-end. Yes, I am talking about those long Styrofoam floatation devices used by the aquatically-challenged. I seriously doubt that they were ever marketed as or intended to be used as tools for the “sexually adventurous”, but people do get creative. I only hope this particular noodle was not pulling double duty by performing its primary function while lodged in this guy’s butt. To make this particular story even more impressive this patient had not only wedged 20cm of pool noodle into his behind, but he folded it IN HALF prior to insertion and thereby was enjoying a DOUBLE DOSE of pool noodle!! I don’t even think he tried to lie and say he slipped in the poolside shower and landed on it. I believe he was one on the ones whose wife placed in his butt while he was “completely unaware”.
WARNING!!! PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!