Have you ever had a patient come in with a bizarre “accident” story, and how did you manage the situation medically and emotionally?
The most spectacular ER patients often enter the building with predicaments so bizarre, that not even the most random accident could have caused such an income / outcome.
Cable guy is the most infamous patient I know of in this department.
The man always ends up in the ER with meters of plastic cable shoved into his urethra, well down into his bladder. The very action itself leads to the fact that he can’t pee anymore — and in the end, this means urgent surgical procedures to prevent his bladder from rupturing — and usually it also leads to glans infections and what have you 🙄
The urologist warns him every single time that he needs to see a psychiatrist, but Cable guy usually just laughs it away until the next time he needs to be saved. (Such cases might look funny at first, but mostly they are really sad.)
Another patient entered the ER with a Yankee candle stuck up there, causing Obstructed Defecation Syndrome (ODS) — meaning he couldn’t poop — and in such patients the surgeon on call is expected time and again to come up with yet another one of his creative solutions to make the patient poop once more.
Candle man “did not know” what the candle was doing in his rectum, by the way. Sometimes accidents do happen.
In case of more complex emergencies — think larger and topologically more advanced objects, such as five-pound dumbbells — creativity cannot cover the load anymore: the patients needs invasive surgery for his or her stupidity —
And an urgent consultation in the psychiatric ward.
SOURCES: Ologun G O, Stevenson Y, Cagir B, et al. (January 05, 2018) Successful Retrieval of a Retained Rectal Foreign Body in the Emergency Department, Cureus 10(1): e2025.