Weirdest/most difficult thing swallowed by a patient

[ixchel]

We're talking about pica in another thread and its left me wondering - what is the weirdest or most impossible thing swallowed by a patient that you have cared for?

(No urban legends, if you don't mind. Hoping for real stories.)

[BuckyBadgerRN, ASN, RN]

I worked in dentistry for many years before I was called back to nursing school (being a smartazz there, I am an adamant poster that nursing is NOT a calling for all) and saw a few swallowed crowns, all accidental. They would loosed on a weekend and the patients would use a little chewing gum to hold it in place until they could be seen. That never works.

One patient did swallow their partial, but it was a Nesbitt partial. A traditional one would be far more difficult.

[bunnysanford]

I don't have any stories (yet), but I've spent many happy hours opening and closing the drawers of the Chevalier Jackson collection of swallowed (and retrieved) objects at the Mütter Museum. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/health/11swallow.html?_r=0

[NurseSpeedy, ADN, LPN, RN]

Don't even get me started on the things people put up their behinds.

That's a whole new thread topic! My patients seemed to have fetishes with produce.

[Farawyn]

That's a whole new thread topic! My patients seemed to have fetishes with produce.

Because I'm not posting the cucumbers again.

[Shayli80]

asked Dementia patient to smell the Gardenia flower,which he did......then promptly ate it!!!

[hawaiicarl, BSN, RN]

We used to have a patient that we called Pacman, because he ate everything. At one time our surgeon considered putting a zipper on his abdomen so we could just unzip him and pull stuff out. I think the weirdest thing he swallowed, other than all his neighbors panties off the laundry line, was all the Christmas ornaments off our units tree. We wondered what he was crunching on, then looked over at the tree ..... uh oh.

Cheers

[Karou]

What's a "front bottom"? Seriously, I'm not sure what you're saying. We're all health professionals here, no need to use cute phrases meant for 4 year olds...

I thought she put it in quotations because that's how the patient phrased it, which made the story all the more funny to me.

[flying_ace2]

A friend told me she had to send an inmate to the ED because he tried to eat his bed. There were pieces of metal on his xray that required an open laparotomy.

When I was in the OR we had a repeat customer, a prisoner, that would eat pieces of his bed. The little metal staple thingies that hold the wires under the mattress taut/together. Came in one time with at least 100 of those in his stomach.

[No Stars In My Eyes]

I worked a PDN case where a co-worker always arrived at work with her box of cornstarch and a spoon. She had a box-a-day habit. She kept the box and spoon out in the attached garage and would slip out there and ...?....I guess the word would be 'indulge'. Eventually she got outed, but, of course there is nothing in the rule-book about cornstarch being illegal.

Did y'all see, I guess it was a couple of years ago on one of the early reality ER shows, where a girl had been trying to use a fork to gag herself (bulimia) and had such a hard time stimulating her gag reflex that she tried to get waaaaay back on her tongue and kind of ended up with it lodged in her throat. She had to sit VERY upright and could not bend her head in any direction for fear of perforaion or it traveling further down. She looked mighty scared, ​as well she might! GADS!

[CelticGoddess, BSN, RN]

When I was a rad tech, I x-rayed a man who had a pair of hemostats in his stomach. No surgery of any kind in his history. He swallowed the hemostats.

I've also seen needles and pins, dentures (Still trying to figure that one out) and a man who swelled at least a dozen washers, lugs and screws

[CelticGoddess, BSN, RN]

I've seen butt paste mistaken for toothpaste before...I'm sure at least a percentage had to have been swallowed....

I was feeding a patient one morning when he took his hand out from under the covers and shoved a handful of crud in his mouth (doesn't say much for the hospital food)...totally didn't see that one coming. I think it's the only time I've ever been left speechless and nauseated from an experience as a nurse.

This one I didn't actually witness but a few nurses that I worked with fresh out of nursing school had been depositioned by a patient's lawyer over him swallowing his partials...how does one accomplish that?...but this thread has mentioned some much stranger things already so it must be possible.

A psych patient took his haldol for me PO, but insisted it was 'monkey nuts' that he was eating.

I had a residents wife eat butt paste because "I thought it was thickened coffee creamer". She ate it, came up to us and asked if she was going to get poisoned. We told her to call her MD. She was a bit of a twit to begin with.

[CryssyD]

When I worked at a facility for psychiatric and developmentally-disabled patients, we had a young lady who couldn't have any sheets, blankets, or pillowcases on her bed, and all her clothes had to be tied or pinned on because she would eat any clothes or linens she could get her hands on. I don't know how she managed to swallow them, but she did.

On a peds unit: a developmentally disabled young man was in restraints (he picked and pulled at all his lines and tubes), but nevertheless managed to slide down, chew off the port cap (rubber-like, self-sealing kind) on his IV line, and proceed to slurp up his IV fluid and, eventually, his own blood as it backed up into the line.

A prisoner was in segregation for narcotic use. He then told us he swallowed 4 batteries (AA, I think) and then chewed up and swallowed a light bulb. He was desperate for pain meds, but the ER was not impressed; they told him he would pass the batteries in a day or so and discharged him. He threw a full-on hissy fit, sat on the floor and refused to leave. That didn't get him his pain meds either.