11 Craziest Things Found in People’s Bodies
Updated: Dec. 08, 2022
Doctors and other medical professionals see some of the craziest things, but at the top of the list has to be the bizarre foreign objects they find in people's bodies.
Maybe there’s a better place to hide the jewelry?
A well-dressed, well-groomed, middle-aged woman came into the ER with stomach pains, recalls Quora contributor, Ali Sadek, MS, MA, MD, PhD. While the physical exam didn’t reveal anything, an abdominal x-ray revealed a lot: The woman’s stomach and upper small bowel were littered with objects resembling jewelry. That’s because they were jewelry. The woman kept swallowing her jewelry to keep her husband from giving the pieces to his mistress. She might have wanted to brush up on these signs of a cheating spouse.
He got his money back
Doctors published an article in the International Journal of Emergency Medicine about a four-year-old boy who accidentally swallowed a large coin—a New Taiwan Dollar. An x-ray confirmed the boy had swallowed the coin. Hoping to avoid surgery, the doctors prescribed laxatives and kept an eye on the progress of the coin; 28 days later, the boy passed the dollar without incident.
Yes, you can be too thorough with toothbrushing
Though it seems impossible, an article recently published in the Journal of Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad reports the story of a man who swallowed a toothbrush. The authors note that this is “a rare foreign body to be ingested accidentally.” No kidding. The man was 55 years old and “living a normal life,” though he waited for two weeks after swallowing the toothbrush before he showed up at the hospital with stomach pain. In this case, surgeons removed the toothbrush. There’s no mention of how white the patient’s teeth were. Did you know you can clean these things with a toothbrush?
A bizarre use of the appendix
In an article published in the International Journal of Surgical Case Reports, three physicians tell of a man who had swallowed razor blades—the reason why is unclear. Guards brought the 25-year-old prison inmate to the hospital due to pain in his abdomen, and X-rays revealed the razor blades, which was strange. Even stranger was the fact that the blades had migrated to his appendix—an extremely rare occurrence. Did you know that the human stomach can dissolve razor blades? It’s just one of the science facts you never learned in school.
Keep track of that toothpick
When a 50-year-old man turned up in the ER with abdominal and urinary tract pain, according to a recent article in the German medical journal DMW, doctors tried everything to figure out what was wrong. They finally tried ultrasound, which is when they spotted a toothpick in the man’s small intestine. These are the secrets ER staff won’t tell you.
The one time it’s better not to have used a power tool
In a Danish-language medical journal, a couple of physicians reported the case of a 58-year old man at the ER with a serious abscess in his rear end—which turned out to have been caused by his insertion of a screwdriver into his rectum. The man survived, but he might not have had he waited much longer. The takeaway message, according to the doctors, is that there is a “risk of insufficient patient counseling due to taboos” in these cases. Don’t miss these other crazy stories from the ER.
When fish isn’t so good for you
Fish is really good for you—the bones, less so: Physicians found a fish bone in a 31-year-old woman’s thyroid gland, according to an article in Case Reports in Medicine. Apparently, a fish bone had gotten stuck in her throat when she was eating, and it had then made its way into her thyroid gland. “Fish bones are not easy to be found as a foreign body,” the doctors note. These seafood facts will change how you eat fish forever.
A troubling type of eating disorder
Surgeons were understandably puzzled when they found ten plastic gloves trapped in his rectum of a 55-year-old intellectually disabled man. As they related in Case Reports in Surgery, it turned out the patient had pica, a disorder that can lead people to crave—and eat—things that aren’t food. “Special considerations must be taken when considering the ingestion of nonfood items in the intellectually disabled population as these cases may not present classically,” the doctors note.
The mole that moved
New York City dermatologist, Joshua Zeichner, MD, had an elderly woman came into the office complaining of a mole on her skin that was changing. When Dr. Zeichner examined her, he realized it wasn’t just changing, it was moving—the “mole” was a tick that had lodged under her skin, which the doctor promptly removed. On a more humorous note, find out the funniest things that ever happened at the doctor’s office.
A creative use for a bullet
An ER doctor friend told Reddit contributor, Malvadere that a patient came in with a live round of ammo in his rectum. Why? The man had painful and itchy hemorrhoids and had been using a 50 mm bullet to scratch himself. The bullet got stuck—and the doctor needed a firearms specialist to help defuse the situation. Don’t miss these bizarre ancient remedies that we bet you’ve never heard of before.
Sponge-worthy?
Another Redditor, BasedOnContent recalls what a doctor told him when he was training to become a Rape Crisis Counselor. The doctor was giving a presentation about sexually transmitted diseases, which veered off into a story of the time he was treating a woman complaining that she had a sponge lodged up near her cervix. The doctor assumed it was a contraceptive sponge—it was not. It was a car-washing sponge. Next, check out the bizarre human body features you didn’t know existed.
Originally Published: November 11, 2019
