The strangest thing you've ever seen on an x-ray?

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Just read the story about the gal that swallowed her engagement ring that her boyfriend slipped into her milkshake. She didn't believe him until she saw the x-ray! Fortunately, the crisis passed ;) What's the funniest/strangest thing you've ever seen on an x-ray?

First time was when my younger brother swallowed one of those giant skeleton keys. The xray had a little boy's 50 pound body with a giant key perfectly lodged in his stomach. He had swallowed lots of other things, but that was the culmination of his efforts.

Then, doing clinicals a few years back a guy came in with a full sized (full) peroxide bottle in his rectum. On a previous ER visit he had put a gold necklace (clasp end first) into his urethra and got it stuck.

Just this week, a pt who was assigned to someone else called out and asked for pain meds while the other nurse was at lunch. I looked it up and told her she had a PO option and an IV option. She told me she wanted the IV option because the PO option "didn't sit well with her stomach". When I looked up why she was at the hospital I got a great look at the FIVE various razorblades she had swallowed. I guess those sat a little better with her.

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Did not see it on x-ray. but in person(in the OR)A spray can of lysol disinfectant spray up someone's butt...got the can out, but the cap was stuck up there....yes, we had to surgically remove it ...On x-ray I have seen a bottle of paste picante sauce shoved pretty high up there...too bad HIPPA wouldn't let me take a picture of that...so weird...:eek:

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Ahh, here come the foreign-object-in-rectum stories

I know it is just a TV show, but I have never laughed so hard as that episode of Scrubs when the guy had the light bulb up his rear and when looking at the x-ray, Dr. Cox says "either that or his colon has a great idea" :rotfl::idea:

I'M ROLLIN OVER HERE! :yelclap:

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Specializes in Med-Surg, School Nurse.

A Pierre Cardin cologne bottle in the rectum (this was in the 80's, the shape was a ball on top of a cylinder...there are images online, of the bottle, not the xray). An 8 ball from a set of pool balls, not the magic type as someone else had mentioned, in the rectum. Patient adamently denied any knowledge of how it got there, pre and post op, when it was shown to him.

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Specializes in ICU, ER.
My mother is an old OR nurse, and she told us some pretty funny stories of 'retrieval procedures' in surgery. The one that stands out was the big, long sweet potato stuck up the guy's rectum, and required it to be surgically removed! Needless to say, we can't have sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving anymore.....

I took care of a patient that claimed to have ' swallowed his toothbrush'.....yeah right, that's why you had to have a hemi-colectomy! Can't imagine how he explained this to his wife and kids! geez!

This would make me want to make sweet potatoes every single holiday just to tell the story! :lol2:

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Specializes in geriatric, pediatric trach/vent, LTAC.

Strangest thing I ever saw on an x-ray was when I was doing my ER rotation during clinicals. A guy comes in by ambulance, lower half of his body covered in blood. He complained of having "a little pain down there". X-ray showed one of those little eyeglass screwdrivers a couple inches up his urethra.

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Specializes in tactical/emercency medicine.

ok, here is yet another fb up the wazoo story. i'll keep it short and sweet.

picture this: er night shift. ambulance tones out for an inmate from the local prison with severe abd and rectal pain. so they bring him in, position of "comfort" face down on tha stretcher. pt's completely hysterical. so we assess him and have labs drawn and do an acute abd series. low&behold. the films come back and tha guy has a 1 liter water bottle that was apparently placed there by a few of the other inmates.

prolly tha most jaw dropping thing i had seen in awhile. lol

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I've seen a hellmans jar, a screw driver, vibrator, and various other things....you just can't make this stuff up.hahaha

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Specializes in critical care/tele/emergency.

Okay, so this was from when I worked at the female prison. Had a female offender that had recently gotten into enough trouble that she was anticipating going into segregation. Now, offenders don't get many things while in seg, the whole point is that it is a form of punishment. So, this offender is anticipating this to happen on a Friday but lo and behold, the seg committee didn't convene for her offenses and she was forced to approach one of the male officers to request to go to sick bay and see a female nurse. Found in the lady partsl area was a full pack of cigarettes, a lighter and tweezers. Said she placed them there and couldn't retrieve them when needed.

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Specializes in cardiac, oncology.

Not really anything strange on xray: had pt go for both abd/pelvic ct and head ct. when the results came back the abd ct said "ventricles good" (or something along that line, it was years ago and the head ct came back "colon full of stool". we laughed all day.

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Lady swallowed a spoon.. When asked if she felt the spoon going down (to examine gag reflex or cranial nerve damage), she replied, "the ice cream was so good I just kept shoveling it in, and lost the spoon."

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Specializes in Cardiology and ER Nursing.
Ahh, here come the foreign-object-in-rectum stories

I know it is just a TV show, but I have never laughed so hard as that episode of Scrubs when the guy had the light bulb up his rear and when looking at the x-ray, Dr. Cox says "either that or his colon has a great idea" :rotfl::idea:

[YOUTUBE]

[/YOUTUBE]

Not the same without the actual video.

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