A glass tumbler was lodged in a woman’s bladder for four years after doctors thought she had a UTI.
The 45-year-old had gone to the hospital with symptoms of a lower UTI (urinary tract infection), including leakage.
However, physicians were taken aback when scans revealed a glass in her bladder.
It was enclosed by an 8cm bladder stone, which is typically so small that it is difficult to spot with the naked eye.
The Tunisian woman said that she had used the drinking glass as a sex toy in the past.
She had apparently inserted it into the urethral – the hole through which women urinate – rather than the vagina.
Her case was published in a medical journal, including the astonishing scan and an image of the glass and bladder stone.
The woman may have been performing “urethral sounding,” which is not mentioned in the medical report.
Wed MD writes that the dangerous activity entails placing a glass or object into the urethra – the tube through which pee runs – in order to “increase sexual pleasure and arousal.”
Doctors have received accounts of people purposefully placing items there, either for mental health reasons or for fun – but this is not advised.
“The most common motivations connected with the presence of foreign bodies within the bladder are of a sexual or erotic character,” according to the paper.
“Various things have been introduced into the bladder, and many patients are too ashamed to seek medical help, which is the source of a clinical problem.”
A scan of the woman’s abdomen revealed a large bladder stone with a glass encased inside.
The patient arrived at the emergency department at Academic Hospital Habib Bourguiba complaining of UTI symptoms.
She reported that she had suffered cystitis (inflammation of the bladder) several times, but it had never been investigated.
The woman didn’t have any blood in her urine, nor was she suffering with urinary incontinence, the report said.
But she did have a higher than normal red blood cell range, indicating the body was fighting an infection.
Bladder stones are very small, usually no more than a few cms wide – this patient’s was 8cm.
They develop from hard masses of minerals that grow when urine is not properly emptied from the bladder.
However, they can grow around foreign object lodged in the bladder, for example, a glass tumbler.
In this case, doctors performed surgery to remove the bladder stone.
They then cracked it open to expose the – still intact – glass, that had been in her body for years.
Two days later the woman had recovered and was well enough to go home.
The report concluded: “Complicated forms are those diagnosed late and often associated with recurrent urinary tract infections, lithiasis and/or fistulas.
“The best treatment remains preventive by balancing the underlying etiopathogenic disorder and by a good sex education.”