foreign body aspiration

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ahhh..c'mon!

In a magazine that sat on unmonitored magazine racks, Discover Magazine did a photo spread of foreign objects found in people's intestines, including light bulbs, toothbrushes, [CENSORED] and even mason jars...the latter of which were reportedly hard to remove because of the vacuum they created towards the end.

Errrr...no pun intended.

 

[nai_cha]

including light bulbs, toothbrushes, [CENSORED] and even mason jars...the latter of which were reportedly hard to remove because of the vacuum they created towards the end.

Yup, jars and soda bottles are the worst.

It's reached the point where me and my colleagues were relieved at seeing things like vibrators because, well, they're SUPPOSED to be in that general area anyways.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

So is the correct medical term for such cases "foreign body as$piration"?

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Wow, I would've loved to see those cases first hand.

Closest I ever got was collaborating on a case series report about our patients who came in with appendicitis and were also found to have swallowed santol seeds.

As for other weird things I've seen inside people...oh well. Not grandma friendly.

I'm not familiar with santol fruit. (What I found online looks pretty tasty, though.) The seeds hadn't sprouted, had they?

I've hear rumors of pepper seeds lodging in the colon (isn't that "diverticulitis" or something?) and growing, but I can't *ahem* back that up, so I doubt that story is true.

 

[Umbran]

I've no personal experience with this sort of thing. The closest I come is my wife's stories of what she's had to remove from the stomachs of dogs: sticks, rocks, linoleum, charcoal briquettes, deflated but intact soccer balls...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

diverticulitis

That affliction- with which I was recently diagnosed- has nothing to do with seeds, etc.. Its a condition in which little pockets form in your intestinal tract and occasionally get enflamed.

Not fun.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Hmm, I'd always heard about it with reference to seeds (strawberries of all things!), but I was actually under the impression the problem wasn't seeds, per se, but just little nodular irritants in general. Now (with a little googling) it looks like that's understood not to be the case, after all. It's odd the things we hear as old wives' tales.

It doesn't sound pleasant one way or the other, though. I hope it's something you can deal with fairly easily.

 

[nai_cha]

Anything that lodges in your respiratory tract that isn't supposed to be there is foreign body aspiration. The santol seeds weren't aspiration per se because we found them in the gastrointestinal tract, not the respi (and yes, they are pretty tasty, and no they didn't sprout, thank goodness).

Any medical term that's "x + itis" means "inflammation of the x." So "diverticulitis" = "inflammation of the diverticulum" Nothing to do with seeds etc and not very fun.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hmm, I'd always heard about it with reference to seeds (strawberries of all things!), but I was actually under the impression the problem wasn't seeds, per se, but just little nodular irritants in general. Now (with a little googling) it looks like that's understood not to be the case, after all. It's odd the things we hear as old wives' tales.

It doesn't sound pleasant one way or the other, though. I hope it's something you can deal with fairly easily.

The thing about seeds and similar food types was once thought to be the case, but is now known to be definitely not the case.

By and large, its one of those afflictions that conforms to the "Doc, my X hurts when I do this" "Then don't do that." kind of treatment...but with a catch.

The advice I got was to increase my intake of roughage. That was about it. More roughage means less chance that something gets lodged in a pocket to feed the waiting bacteria which then causes the inflammation. The funny thing is, I already eat a LOT of roughage.

What happened in my case was that I hadn't done so, then felt a little off- a twinge of pain or two...then I BINGED on roughage.

Turns out that this is exactly the WRONG thing to do when you're having a flare-up. When you have a flare-up, the extra roughage just irritates your intestines even more.

Which led to me winding up in the ER feeling like someone was trying to cut open my stomach from rib to belt with a large blade. It was as bad as the pain I got from tearing my ACL & MCL playing football: I thought I'd ruptured a muscle or something.

Here's the funny clincher: the docs don't know what causes diverticulitis. Like cataract formation, they haven't been able to define a set of strongly linked factors that would let them tell you how to reduce your risks for it.

Yay!

 

[Merkuri]

The closest I come is my wife's stories of what she's had to remove from the stomachs of dogs: sticks, rocks, linoleum, charcoal briquettes, deflated but intact soccer balls...

My husband's dog once ate a Christmas ornament. Not one of the ones made of food like popcorn garland or gingerbread men, noo... A glass Christmas bulb.

I'm told he turned out okay, but had sparkly poo the next day.