Hammer as "cure" for constipation?

Viorel Firoiu, 48, of Romania claims that it was constipation that lead him to get two hammerheads stuck in his rectum. (Sure that was the reason.) Doctors had to surgically remove the two items. From Austrian Times:

Dr Cristina Bontescu, spokeswoman for the local hospital where he turned up at the emergency unit, said: "He was a bit drunk and said he had been eating cherries that had left him badly constipated. He said he had a few drinks to dull the pain and then came up with the idea of poking a hammerhead up his backside in the hope of sorting out the constipation. "But the hammerhead got stuck and then he came up with the idea of using a second hammerhead in order to try and get out the first - but then he lost the second one as well."

"Heavy metal cure for constipation"

Previously:

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Quoll

Since when is it okay to post people’s private medical information on the internet??

I get the hilarity (boy, do I) and I’ve been as amused as anyone (in private, away from the bedside!) when patients have presented with retained foreign objects, but breaking confidentiality…? No, just no. All kinds of fail.
Anonymous

If at first you don’t succeed . . .
Maclure

“If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the evening, I’d stick it up my butt..”
pinehead

Just think, a couple hundred years ago, people stuffing their butts full of hammers usually died. Modern medicine is truly a miracle.
igpajo

“and then came up with the idea of poking a hammerhead up his backside in the hope of sorting out the constipation.”
-I don’t care how much you had to drink…how does that thought even begin to form in your mind. Good God!!

@ #6…you almost made me blow beer out my nose.
mstoddard

I’m just glad no one got hurt.
RainyRat

I think there must be something (else) wrong with me: the first thing that popped into my head about half-way through the article was “I could have come up with a WAY better excuse than that…”

I think if I ever do get anything lodged like that (accidentally or otherwise), I’m going to have to tell the Doctor that I was…you know, “experimenting”. Because that’s what they’re going to think anyway.
dwdyer

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390374/
aagblog

Why anyone would use two hammers when they could use a perfectly good anthropomorphic ejaculating dragon dildo is beyond me.

Geesh.
IWood

Y’all know what a post-holer is?

Effective, that’s what.
Gilbert Wham

I heard a girl in our office the other day saying to the IT guy, ‘I know I broke it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need fixing, now does it?’
Presumably, a similar response is the only face you could save in A&E if this is why you went in is to be completely unapologetic; ‘Yes, I know there are TWO hammers up my ass. That’s why I’m here. Please remove them, as that is why YOU are here.’
Takuan

I see I’m hopelessly behind here.
friendpuppy

I know an emergency room doctor and he said there was always some weird excuse when somebody showed up with something ‘lodged’ in them. He even devised a little tool to remove the ‘lodge’.
Ratdog

This gives emergency hammers a whole new meaning.
noen

“One wonders if any cherries were busted during this exercise.”

I’m thinking the first hammer head did that. I used to work at a medical clinic and the oddest thing I ever saw was an x-ray of an entire wine glass in someone’s colon, unbroken. Which is quite a trick if you ask me and deserves extra points for style and difficulty.
LightningRose

Don’t forget the mathematician who worked it out with a pencil.
Anonymous

hmmm… very interesting
daev

Geez folks… I woke up my wife reading these comments. Youse are in some rare form tonight.
Anonymous

One wonders if any cherries were busted during this exercise.
dragonet2

I used to be the evening/weekend circulation and shelving supervisor at the U. Kans. Med Center library (Clendening to A.R. Dykes).

I could not wait to see the newest New England Journal of Medicine for the X-ray “can you believe it” pix they always published. Things like light bulbs up their rectums (very dangerous) to all kinds of weird stuff people had swallowed.

JAVMA occasionally also had some pix, the most impressive was a siamese that had swallowed a knitting needle, it had punctured it’s esophagus and slide into the chest/abdominal cavity, but managed not to puncture anything else. (one of it’s nine lives…)
Marchhare

So, are the tools intact? Or is it the case that he rectum?
Anonymous

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Also, if you are easily disgusted, for the love of god SKIP THIS.

My mother told me a story about her grandmother, who was ‘from the old country’ and not very sophisticated. When my mother was maybe 9 or so, her grandmother gave her a fork and had her assist in ‘clearing the blockage’. So…. maybe this guy is telling the truth. People do strange things, especially when in pain.
Anonymous

Yeah, really bad idea. Anyone who made it through shop class knows you NEVER use a hammer on another hammer.

I don’t recall ever being taught not to stuff them up yer butt for the relief of constipation, though. Maybe the latter overrules the former.

Best comments section I’ve seen all week BTW.
Anonymous

Hmm, great shot. I got this xray of a man with a huge can of whipped cream in his guts. Which is not so spectacular, because cans of all kind seem to be very popular with this kind of hobby.
Piers W

#1 – a true pioneer mutant would have two hammerheads and a rare earth magnet attached to a cord up his rectum.
jimbuck

I can see this as a Newlywed Show question

Host – Ok ladies, we asked your husbands – how many hammerheads have they ever had stuck up their rear at the same time. Natasha? What did your husband Viorel say.

Natasaha – I will say…. I will say… three?

Viorel – are you crazy, Natasha? I had TWO hammerhears up there. TWO. THREE? You are crazy in the head.
Anonymous

Put this guy into a spin tomograph. The hammers will come right out.
Anonymous

There’s a Romanian saying: “Cui pe cui se scoate” which means “You can get a nail out by using another nail.” (literal translation). To give you a taste of what it actually means: you can recover from a hangover by drinking more. This will help you get in his train of thought. :)
Anonymous

His problem was to hesitate to insert the claws first. It may hurt a bit at first, but one should never go in without planning the all important exit strategy and its careful application (use a plastic bucket).

Some people just can’t learn…

IamInnocent, and too lazy to sign in.
aldasin

It was the decision to try the 2nd one that makes this guy a true mutant, a pioneer. Mere freaks and low-lifes such as myself sometimes make it to the precipice and turn back, but the true mutant leaps without a second thought.
Anonymous

Should have learned from the monkey…

A guy walks into a bar with his pet monkey.

He orders a drink and while he’s drinking, the monkey starts jumping all over
the place. The monkey grabs some olives off the bar and eats them, then grabs
some sliced limes and eats them, then jumps up on the pool table, grabs the cue
ball, sticks it in his mouth and swallows it whole.

The bartender screams at the guy, “Did you see what your monkey just did?”
The guy says, “No, what?” “He just ate the cue ball off my pool table – whole!”
says the bartender.

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” replies the patron. “He eats everything in
sight, the little jerk. I’ll pay for the cue ball and stuff.” He finishes his
drink, pays his bill, and leaves.

Two weeks later he’s in the bar again, and he has his monkey with him. He orders
a drink and the monkey starts running around the bar again. While the man is
drinking, the monkey finds a maraschino cherry on the bar. He grabs it, sticks
it up his butt, pulls it out, and eats it.

The bartender is disgusted. “Did you see what your monkey did now?” “Now what?”
asks the patron. “Well, he stuck a maraschino cherry up his butt, then pulled it
out and ate it!” says the barkeeper. “Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” replies
the patron.

“He still eats everything in sight, but ever since he ate that cue ball he
measures everything first!”
Brother Provisional

I’ve never gotten constipated from eating too many cherries. Quite the opposite, in fact, but I’m sure the diuretic effects of alcohol consumption played a part in this gentleman’s discomforting digestive condition.
Let this be a lesson to all of us: Drink plenty of water when consuming alcohol, or you could very well end up with foreign objects in your lower intestines.
StRevAlex

“It was a million-to-one shot, doc! Million-to-one shot!”
Anonymous

“He was a bit drunk…”

I’d say he was hammered.
jjasper

STOPPED UP?

HAMMERTIME!

(you can’t flush this)
Snig

Oh great. First we learn the truth about drugs and Puff the magic dragon. Now we learn that the seemingly innocent folk song “If I had a hammer” has anal implement connotations. Well folk me.
David Pescovitz

This thread is hysterical. Y’all really crap me up. (Sorry.)
aeon

More here:

http://www.well.com/user/cynsa/newbutt.html

A Professor of Surgery once told me of a live cannon shell he’d extracted from a patient’s rear. The patient claimed to be using it to reduce his piles when it slipped inside… So on extraction they had the bomb squad in the operating theatre as well to ensure safe disposal.
noen

So that’s what the claw on a hammer is for. Huh.
ill lich

Of course it didn’t work, hammers are for diarrhea; for constipation you’re supposed to used an adze.

(and the difference between the two is a semicolon.)
dman

A bad case of hammer-oids?
ill lich

Where the hell is goatse when you need him?
Anonymous

cherries are full of fiber, they HELP with constipation, no way that they caused it.
Anonymous

It’s comforting to know that once government officials in the United States get hold of our medical records after “health reform” passes, we too can have our rectal medical privacy invaded by Boing Boing.

Wonder how much the nurse got for leaking the photos?
Lobster

This guy needs to find a better hammer supplier. These are obviously poorly made hammers.
Anonymous

But it’s usually the third one that does it.
dole

Wonder if this is the same “one guy one jar” guy.
dbarak

He was obviously trying to make a stool in his workshop.
HurfDurf

…and so goes the 10th installment of ‘Appalachian Emergency Room’.
Antinous / Moderator

It’s funnier when you realize that iron causes constipation.
buddy66

@#2,

I usually don’t respond to “Anonymous” because I can’t check out past comments to get an idea what sort of person I’m dealing with, but I’ve got to say that joke is absolutely one of the funniest goddamn things I’ve ever heard! EVER!

If you’ve got any more, keep ‘em coming! I’ll be down here on the floor, rolling around…
Anonymous

Looks like a case for Mythbusters
Anonymous

“my guts wuz all clogged solid, so i tried winkling it out with the claw-hammer”

“d’ya fix um?”

“no, i wrecked um”
DWittSF

Well, when a man’s only tool is a hammer…
Anonymous

I’m just glad it wasn’t a shark/