You're just dying to find out...

about the crazy things people stick up their butts, aren't you? We won't be doing a rotation in the ER anytime soon, and that's where those stories originate, but here's another example of something you don't stick up your rear: a dowel rod.

One of today lectures (well, both actually) talked about bowels (yes, again) and disease, etc., and our professor shared a story from his days as an ER nurse. A man came walking into the ER looking as if he just got off a horse, you know, crab walking. That's your first sign that something is not right. So, they do an xray and discover that he put a wax-coated dowel rod up his bum and it got sucked up into his large intestine. When that happens it often requires surgical removal. This is very much like the guy many of you heard about who stuck a big vibrator (including the testicle part) up his bum and he used a fork (yes, a fork) up there to dislodge it. In case you were wondering, the distal end of your GI tract has 2 sphincters and once you get something past your internal anal sphincter, well, it's gone. It's called the point of no return, people, so you better be damned sure that you don't stick anything up there that you can't get out. This also goes back to my own personal theory that your rectum/anus is in "out" hole not an "in" hole but that's just me. If you don't subscribe to that theory, that's cool, just practice good hygiene and never, ever use analeeze. You can hurt yourself without realizing it due to it's anesthetic effects.

Anyway, both patients required surgery and a temporary colectomy while the bowel healed. That means that they close off part of your bowel and then create a new anus by connecting the bowel to a hole in your abdomen thus giving you a place for excrement to, um, excrete. You attach a colostomy bag to the stoma (that's what the artificial anus thing is called) to collect your excrement until your bowel is healed and is then surgically sewn back together. Often this is a temporary arrangement but sometimes it is permanent in cases like colon cancer, etc.

So, my other theory is that no one wants a colectomy and there are ways to prevent needing one unless you get cancer but, hey, that's what sigmoidoscopies are for, right? And lots of fiber, but I digress. I think it should be a requirement that there should be a brief lecture during high school health class on sticking things up your bum. If you do it and something gets "lost", you should just take yourself to the ER right away and not try dislodging the item with a fork and, really, if you're going to stick something up your bum, make sure you can get it back out. Then there needs to be a talk about thorough cleanliness and hand washing. Hee, you can bet that parents don't want me running for school board...