The case of the man who was SCREWED!

The case of the man who was SCREWED

It was a Wednesday night and I was working the night shift in the emergency room at a local hospital. It was my favorite job ever. The night started off slowly with a few people who had cut themselves while doing various home projects and they were waiting for stitches. There was a man in the chest pain area that had a heart bypass done a few months prior and was now experiencing chest pains. Two people were there with flu-like symptoms and one patient had pink-eye. 

Then a man came in and checked in at the register with abdominal pain. He was acting peculiar and he sat with a lean to one side, not sitting directly on his bottom. This is always the signs of a person who has a misplaced object in his body. We had a 99.9% record of accurately guessing that these patients have something inside them that is no longer giving them pleasure and they want us to get the object out.

This was a white man in his early forties who was very neatly dressed and his hair was nicely groomed. He looked very uncomfortable as he sat sort of sideways on the chair in our waiting room. I peered out at him when I got the chart and it was obvious to me that he was one of what some ER employees call the “hide and seekers”. They hide it and then they want us to seek it.

After about 45 minutes to an hour, this patient was brought back to be assessed. He laid there on his side, waiting to see the physician. His nurse put in an iv and began asking him about the events of his day and when the abdominal pain began. He skirted around the questions and said he thinks he may have sat on something but he was not sure. He just knows that it hurts.

There were two physicians on duty and I looked up to see Dr. A coming toward the chart rack, I pulled this patient’s chart and smiled very big at him. He nodded and headed toward our new patient with abdominal pain.

Try as he might, Dr. A could not get this patient to admit that he had intentionally inserted something. The patient said he just suddenly began having abdominal pain and he repeatedly said, "I think I probably sat on something!”

Dr. A issued an order for an abdominal x-ray and we waited with baited breath to see what it would expose. There it was as clear as could be, a large screwdriver. I had learned from my years in the ER that screwdrivers are the most popular of all objects  people use in this strange way. Those who end up with things in their rectums, seem to like screwdrivers more than anything else for that purpose. Understandably, they are always inserted handle first, otherwise they would rip their skin and do serious harm in the process.

This screwdriver was quite large, but not unusual at all. Dr. A kept a record and said that there were more standard screwdrivers than Phillips head screwdrivers removed from rectums. Interesting fact indeed. Of course when it came time to talk to the patient about our findings and about the plans to remove the object, Dr. A grabbed my hand and away we went to visit this poor uncomfortable, confused man.

I will always remember the words spoken by Dr. A that evening. He said, “Hi, Mr. Josephson, this is Juanita, my assistant and we are here to inform you that YOU ARE SCREWED!” 

I am certain that my face was as red as the scarlet letter from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book. I stood there as he explained the x-ray showed a large screwdriver was lodged in the patient’s rectum. He stressed how dangerous that could be. He explained to Mr. Josephson that we would be moving him to the operating room within a hour to have this item removed.

The patient said he had no idea how in this world something like this could have happened. I looked at Dr. A and he looked back at me. Then the patient said, “Oh, I was helping my friends do some repairs and it must have happened when I was putting new hinges on his cabinet doors!” He seemed so pleased that he had come up with a feasible explanation for the screwdriver.

Somehow Dr. A nor I believed that was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God.

I still do not understand why screwdrivers are the most common item used in this strange behavior. I am glad we were able to help yet another person who is confused about the use of this particular orifice of the human body.