FEELING LIKE AN IDIOT

It's all relative.

You know how you hear those stories about people showing up at the emergency room with all kinds of things stuck up their butt? Okay, maybe you don't, but when I worked for the orthopaedist our office was right next to the hospital so we heard all the stories from our friends who worked ER when we passed through on our way to the cafeteria.

There were people who had arrived with a beer bottle (ouch!), a lightbulb (can you even imagine if it broke?), various vegetables and my personal favorite, salt AND pepper shakers stuck up their respective asses. Once you'd lost the salt shaker why in the world would you send the pepper in after it? I saw these things with my very own eyes - on the x-rays! Yes, they x-ray the abdomen to determine whether or not SURGERY would be required.

And as if all that trauma is not enough, those x-rays are kept around and shown to others for their amusement and awe. Oh yes they are. Just a little FYI in case you get any ideas.

I wish I could say that these people were all from the senior center and were demented which is what led them to such an unhappy, ahem, end, but no! They were just regular adults, like anyone you might know or work with, who adventured into the land of assplay without a clear undertanding of how quickly things can go wrong in that arena. The demented seniors definitely shoved things into themselves, but it was usually more like something a little kid would do, you know a quarter up the nose, that kind of stuff. Although one old guy did stick a pencil up his penis. OH MY GOD! I can't even write that without cringing.

And it's funny how we human beings have a habit of sticking things in our orifices. Where they get stuck.

Those birth control sponges must have gotten stuck a lot because my friend Pat informed me that there was an 800 number you could call where they'd talk you through getting it unstuck.

She found out about that number the hard way.

My particular orifice story did not result from an act of intention on my part, although I must admit that as a child I would swallow pretty much everything I put in my mouth which necessitated that my mom be on alert for it to reappear in the toilet the in the near future. No, I ended up on the exam table with people standing around snickering because of a sneeze. This didn't happen all that long ago which makes me one of those people who you might know or work with, slinking into the doctors office for some help with an embarassing situation.

I sneezed while eating Doritos and since I had only put the chip into my mouth mere seconds before the explosion I had not yet had the chance to chew it into tiny little pieces. And when I sneezed a huge piece of Dorito with jagged edges was blown into my left sinus cavity where I could feel it banging around. No amount of nose blowing could get it out. My efforts to try to inhale it back into my throat were for naught, although my friends and family were quite amused by the noises and faces I made as I attempted to get that thing out of there for 12 hours.

Finally I couldn't stand it any longer and went to the doctor where I had to explain over and over and over again how I came to have a Nacho Cheese Dorito bouncing around in my head. They were like, "What? You're kidding!" No. I wasn't. Because I had waited so long and spent obsessive hours blowing and snorting and hawking there had been swelling in the area. Swelling in the area is never good. In the future when I get something stuck up my nose I'm going directly to the doctor because swelling just makes resolution that much more difficult.

It took THREE different sizes of nasal canula, and lots of dramatic gagging, to dislodge and push the offending chip down into my throat, where I choked on it briefly before SWALLOWING it!

While this is no where near as bad as showing up at the emergency room with a Mr. Microphone up your butt necessitating x-rays that people will stand around as gasp at, it was still pretty bad. It is why I would rather feel like an idiot for immediately spitting whatever is in my mouth across the room the minute I feel a sneeze coming on, than ever again feel like an idiot sitting in the doctor's office with food lodged in my head.