Something almost happened to me last week that made me think quite differently about those dreadful hospital stories you hear about foreign objects ending up in places they were never meant to be.
(When I say “ending up” I mean inserted and when I say “places they were never meant to be” I mean the long dark passages of the human body, specifically the back one. If this post sounds as though it’s going to be more than your constitution can handle then I’d advise you to turn back now; it’s only going to get worse.)
Now look; we’ve probably all been told various hospital-based anecdotes about over-enthusiastic object-insertion. Some of them must be urban myth, for sure, but on the other hand I’ve known a fair few people who have actually worked in A&E (ER if you’re in the US) and have revelled in telling their first-hand stories. The man stretchered in from the ambulance with a hoover hose sticking out of his rear, the woman and the coke bottle, the lemon that was wholly stuck in an unholy cavity, like stuffing in a turkey; the stories of cucumbers and remote controls and Christmas baubles and Barbie dolls and things so utterly bizarre you have to wonder what an earth the person was thinking. We’ve (mostly) all heard these stories and perhaps we’ve laughed, aghast, or winced and wondered at the utter humiliation that would befall a person who had to go to A&E with such a predicament. But for me, ...