Apples, assorted cutlery, stress balls, a foam football, a steel pipe, and a game controller. That may sound like a modern updated version of “The 12 Days of Christmas” without the partridge in a pear tree. But instead these are objects that have apparently been found in different patients’ rectums so far in 2023, according to a TikTok video posted by Joshua R. Gonzalez, MD, a urologist and sexual medicine specialist practicing in Los Angeles, California. In the video, Gonzales danced through the video that started with the words “More Things Found in Rectums in 2023” and then proceeded through a list of the aforementioned objects. Because dancing is what you do when the subject is rectums, right?
Here’s the TikTok video:
How about them apples? Looks an apple a day does not always keep the doctor away.
Speaking rectums, if you are curious about what’s been found in patients’ rectums over the decade from 2012 through 2021, look no further than a study described by a July 6 publication in the journal Cureus. For that study, a team (Nicholas W. Sheets, Ian Waldrop, William C. Carpenter, Emily Dubina, Bhani Kondal, Hayden Schultz, David Plurad) searched the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) to find incidences of people during that ten-year period who visited emergency rooms for rectal foreign bodies. In this situation, a rectal foreign body doesn’t mean something in your end that says “innuendo” with a foreign accent. Rather, it applies to an object that doesn’t normally sit your rectum but has somehow made it there.
The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) created the NEISS, which is database that’s freely accessible by the public. The NEISS is a repository of data from approximately 100 participating hospitals on emergency departments (EDs) visits associated with consumer products. And spoiler alert, most consumer products do not belong in your rectum.
The team found a total of 135,844,348 ED visits between 2012 and 2021 in the NEISS database. Here ED stands for emergency department and not erectile dysfunction. Of these over 135 million ED visits, 1,806 of them or 0.0013% involved some type of rectal foreign body. That means that something in the bum was far from the most common reason to visit the ED during that time period. It’s not as if the first question asked when you go to the ED is, “OK, what do you have in your rectum now?” But it also means that each year well over a hundred people went to ED because there was a little too much thunder down under, so to speak. In fact, the number of such visits in the database increased over time from 144 in 2012 to 236 in 2021.
What do you reckon was most commonly found in patients’ rectums? The winner was massage devices and vibrators, comprising 22.7% of all objects. This was followed by jewelry at 8.1%, which has an interesting ring to it. The fact that pens and pencils were the third most common at 4.4% wasn’t exactly something to write home about. And you wouldn’t be fishing if you said that fishing gear was the fourth most common at 3.6%. Coming in fifth were non-glass bottles or jars came at 2.6%, which brings new meaning to leaving the back door ajar.
Now, if you did the math, you’d realize that these top five sets of objects accounted for less than half of all visits. The remaining 58.5% consisted of objects that fell into the “other” category of things that left people in “arrears” so to speak. This “other” category included things such as rope or string, toys, bathtubs or shower fixtures, aerosol containers, balls, bags, batteries, marbles, paper products, golf equipment, dolls, plastic containers, glass bottles or jars, building sets, jewelry, sewing basket articles, crayons or chalk, candles, drinking glasses, screwdrivers, metal containers, cabinets and racks, flatware, kitchen gadgets, alcoholic beverages, plastic products, balloons, knives, manual cleaning equipment, flashlights, billiard products, non-electric razors, hair curlers, games and game parts, toothpicks, light bulbs, towels or cloths, soap, desk supplies, manicure/pedicure tools, coins, drapery, pipe, tie racks, tableware, telephone and accessories, glass tubing, pet supplies, nails/screws, electronics, drinking straw, computers, plastic wrapping, table tennis equipment, diapers, cigarette or pipe lighters, cleansing brushes, Christmas decorations, fishing equipment, portable food or beverage coolers, electric lighting equipment, bed or bedframes, toy vehicles, baseball equipment, vaporizers, ice picks, kitchen mixing bowls, scissors, thermometers, telescopes/binoculars/microscopes, and stereo accessories. Yikes, that list could fill quite a few Etsy boards. Who would have figured that the answer to the question “Honey, where did you put my hair curler” might be “The same place I put my tie rack?”
In hindsight, no deaths occurred. The majority (71.1%) “ended” up being treated in the ED and then released. A little less than a quarter (which by the way is one object that has ended up in people’s rectums) or 22.4% required hospital admission. Of note, 2.0% of the patients left the ED without being seen. Gee wonder why a person would leave the ED without being seen in such a situation. It wasn’t clear what happened to this latter group of patients, whether they said, “WTF am I doing here,” or whether the problem worked itself out on its own, so to speak. The study didn’t get the drop on what happened in such cases,
Now, if you are apt to say, “Putting something in my rectum, that was for my younger days,” keep in mind that the visits did span all patient ages all the way up to 93 years. Before you look at your grandparents suspiciously and say, “Where is the eight ball,” though, the ages did skew younger with an average age of 30 years and the largest proportion of people falling in the 11-15 and 21-25 years age strata. That certainly didn’t mean that older people weren’t playing in the backyard. Interestingly, after a dip in the 30s and early 40s age range, there was a slight sustained bump up to the 60s. Talk about being on the other side of 40.
This wasn’t just a “you got male thing” either with 64.6% being male. A little less than half (47.1%) of the patients were white, 14.4% were Black, 0.9% were of Asian descent, and 0.3% were Native American. A fairly large percentage (32.2%) were listed as race “unknown.” Perhaps leaving demographic information may not be the first inclination when you are in the ED with an object up your butt.
The study didn’t specify exactly why people were putting these different objects up their butts. But you can probably put a finger on the reason for most cases. And it’s likely not something like, “There wasn’t enough space in the cabinet” or “I’ev enver played table tennis before so didn’t quite know what to do.” If you’ve ever worked in the ED, you’ll realize that “I was just sitting there minding my own business, when…” is a common explanation for any, umm, interesting occurrence. But typically objects don’t “accidentally” end up in one’s butt. The available evidence from the study did suggest that there were no if, ands, or butts about these being conscious decisions in most cases with only 1.1% of the patients recorded as being positive for alcohol use. Of course, keep in mind that the database recorded alcohol use for only 60.4% of the patients.
The bottom line is that you’ve got to be careful about what you put into your rectum. Don’t simply maintain an open door policy. While most consumer products may not specifically say, “Do not put in your rectum,” it would be too much to ask every manufacturer to put such a warning on practically every consumer product. Instead, stick to things that are clearly approved to go up there. And if you need somewhere to put your change, buy a wallet or a fanny pack.
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