As uncomfortable as it sounds, people regularly find themselves in situations that take a turn for the worse and end with a trip to the emergency room.
Getting foreign objects stuck in the rectum happens more often than many people would expect. According to the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, there were nearly 40,000 emergency department visits in the US between 2012 and 2021 related to objects lodged in the rectum.
With the holiday season approaching, anal surgeon Dr. Evan Goldstein from Bespoke Surgical issued a specific warning about the dangers of using Christmas ornaments in this way.
He explained: “Most ornaments and decorations are flimsy, uneven, and built with seams, caps, hooks, or jagged edges. Many can easily crack or shatter under the pressure of the sphincter muscles.”
Despite these warnings, Christmas ornaments did not actually appear on the list of objects found lodged in people’s rectums in the US over the past year, according to data released by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Based on reporting from Defector, some of the items officially recorded as having been found in people’s rectums included the following:
While many of these cases did not come with an explanation, some reports did include reasons for how the objects ended up there.
Another patient admitted they put a baseball where it did not belong just to see what it felt like. In a separate incident, someone ended up with pliers stuck in their body while trying to retrieve a seven-inch dildo that had gone in too far.
Some of the items listed in those cases included:
