Two years ago, while working in the busy
ER of a beach resort town, I was assigned as the triage nurse for the day. I would greet
new patients, get a description of their problem, take their vital signs, and assign them
a priority to be seen by the doctor. In the early morning hours of one summer day, two men
walked into my office. I smiled and invited them to have a seat and tell me what the
problem was. The patient looked embarrassed, and replied, "No thanks. I'd rather
stand." His partner, however took a seat quietly. "What seems to be the
problem?" I asked. The patient blushed, muttered a few words as if trying to decide
exactly what to say. Finally he looked at me and said, "I may as well tell you
straight out. I've got a dildo up my ass." Gentle Readers, I assure you, I did not so
much as crack a smile. Although I will admit, it was a struggle not to. "And was this
consensual?" I asked, cautiously. I did need to be sure the man had not been raped.
"Oh, yes," he replied, glancing at his partner. "It was definitely
consensual." I asked him how large the object was ("object", or
"foreign body" in medical lingo, is anything in the human body that's not
supposed to be there). "Twelve inches," he replied. After getting his vitals, I
told him and his partner to wait in the waiting room, and I'd get them in as soon as
possible. I then went to the nurses station and handed the doctor the man's chart.
Needless to say, the entire staff was incredulous at what I reported to them.
The doctor ordered an
immediate x-ray, which showed the object to be a full 18 inches in length. To give you an
idea how big is really was, the object stretched from the man's anus, halfway across his
transverse colon (to about where his belly button is). The doctor tried to remove the
object digitally, which is to say, he stuck his (gloved!) fingers into the guy's ass to
try and grab onto the dildo. Unfortunately, it kept slipping out of his grasp. A surgeon
had to be called in. The surgeon had to use a sigmoidscope to view the object, and grab it
with a special tool in order to remove it. That's when we found out it was double headed.
Imagine if you will the camera as it plunges into a man's anus, to be greeting by a
portion of human anatomy in a decidedly odd location. Oh, and by the way. The patient is
(or was) a practicing dentist, and told us he has AIDS.
