Strange but True

Posted by John

Awhile back someone was kind enough to pass along the following text to the wife and I that came directly from a medical chart he had seen with his own two eyes. As you’ll soon see, he passed it along to us because it brought together our two industries – plumbing engineering and gastroenterology - in a remarkably unpredictable way. Almost a collision course, if you will. Now, let me preface this by saying the following text can be difficult to read, let alone comprehend and is not for the faint of heart, but I can assure you I would not even bring this up if it wasn’t true:

This morning, while lowering himself onto the commode, [the patient] reports slipping and had the metallic arm of the faucet on the toilet go up into his rectum. His wife shows multiple cell phone pictures depicting a faucet with a, ~3inch diameter head and long shaft. Patient and wife say that EMS reported 8 inches of stool on the faucet arm.

After my brain dry-heaved a few times as I tried to comprehend the words I’d just read, I set out to make sense of the whole ordeal, figuring the only way to do so was to look at it from several different perspectives:

Engineering: I don't know of a plumbing fixture that is both a commode and a sink, which is to say, what the fuck was a faucet doing in the vicinity of the toilet? Perhaps after having a 3" diameter, 8" long metal shaft jammed up his bum, the victim’s - I mean the patient's - memory could have been compromised and he was not in fact lowering himself onto the commode but rather the bidet, which could indeed have a faucet on it, depending on the make and model. However, based on the fact that his inconsiderate whore of a wife was taking pictures of the incident with her cell phone rather than helping him out, I'm guessing he's not the type of guy who even knows what a bidet is, let alone uses one a regular basis. 

Physics: Newton's First Law of Motion states that any object in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by a force. The Second Law of Motion states that a body of mass, m, experiencing a force, F, will accelerate at a rate, a, such that F = ma. The Third Law of Motion sates that when one body exerts a force, F, on a second body, the second body exerts a force of equal magnitude in the opposite direction on the first body. If we combine these three laws we can see that the man comprised of mass, m, was accelerating at a rate, a, due to the force of gravity, F, until a second body, the faucet, applied an equal and opposite force of friction normal to the man's ass, yet still took 8" in order to stop his fall... Ergo, we can conclude that this man’s sphincter is now in his esophagus. 

Physiological: This man will clearly need a colonoscopy to determine the extent of the damage to his colon but the good news is, the procedure can now be conducted with a periscope in lieu of an endoscope thanks to the blunt force trauma he received on his cornhole. I would recommend a first year intern perform said procedure. 

Sociological: When you're laid up on the couch for 4-6 weeks collecting long-term disability after an incident such as this, you better spend every second of every day thinking up the best fucking story to explain your absence from work because when you get back the last thing you're going to tell the boys at the office is the fucking truth.

If my analysis hasn’t satiated your concern over the probability of such an incident actually happening, no worries, I’ve already submitted this inquiry to Mythbusters so you can expect them to tackle the plausibility of all this in an upcoming episode. Until then, I’m sorry I ruined your next five meals with a discussion of this nature.