Oh, sweet malpractice...
 

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...7/mdf97236.jpg

This is an x-ray originally taken August 15, 2000. The white rectangle there is a 13-inch long, two-inch wide surgical retractor left inside the body of Donald Church after he underwent an operation at the University of Washington Medical Center to remove a tumor. The op was done June 6, 2000. For little more than 2 months, the man was moving around with a metal bar inside of him.

Anyone else just think of the Seinfeld episode with the Junior Mint?

~mike

Eeeew man. Coulda at least blurred out the penis n' nuts. :)

Seriously though, what if they had left, oh, a scalpel or something in there? You move a funny way and it slices your aorta. That's pretty fucked up.

Well, golly gee...would you have objected to female tits and/or ass? I notice the fecal matter in the transverse colon didn't get your attention. :-)

I love being bi...as someone recently said about mayonaise, "it's all good". :-)

what, are you doctors?
 

I can't see any of that stuff. Transverse colon, yeah, that's that transverse thing right by the, um, thing right over there. OK, I see the nuts (this is one healthy specimen I think) but the pecker could be anywhere. It's not that pecker looking thing, I don't think, because it's stopping more x-rays than his entire leg. Then again, by the softball-size gonads who knows he could just be really healthy.

I CAN see that freaking steel I-beam they left in this guy. How did he find out, by setting off metal detectors? If he lays on a raft in a pool does he point north? Didn't the doctors see it when they sewed him back up? Wouldn't you miss a tool that size afterwards?

That's it for my examination. Nurse, another scotch! >urp<

The mind boggles. How could one leave that in there?

As for the penis - it just kinda popped out at me. I was more joking than anything. You'd think the guy would have objected to having it shown in the x-ray though. Or maybe he's proud of his gigantic scrotum sack.

Re: what, are you doctors?
 

No, Joe...it's *on top of* his leg...his pelvis, actually. It's not stopping *more* flux, just stopping *additional* flux.
Not if he keeps X-raying them. :-) And doesn't change doctors.

ROFL! That's the funniest thing I've heard all day.
I dunno...dham didn't miss it.

Oh, you mean the retractor....:-)

heehee... sorry, im still stuck on the junior mint thing :) gotta love seinfeld. :)

Re: what, are you doctors?
 

Honestly? Yes, that's how he found out! I saw it on the news wires a few days back. He had been complaining about pain inside since the operation, but the MDs thought it was jusy post operative healing. He went to go on an airplane flight, and tripped the metal detectors. The guys with the wands figure out it was metal inside. Went to a different MD, who took the X-Rays. I gather the hospital has already settled for a 6 figure sum

Charlie
(who loves working for the news media)

I still say that can't be his Johnson
 

The pecker-looking thing is indeed adding density to other areas, and is not imaged seperately (and our patient is very happy about that).

But added or no, it's showing comparable density as bone.

< joke> text < /joke>"

It just can't happen, no matter how healthy you are. I don't believe that's his pecker, just on the density issue alone. It looks SORT OF like one, but there's a much fainter image if you look carefully that seems more likely.

What we really need here is a professional radiologist who spends much of his time evaluating such images. Luckily we have one if I can convince him to browse the thread. (I'm not kidding, be right back)

nah... Come on ya'll.... that's his wang (circumcized too, I believe)... pointing down, to the right, at a 45 degree angle to his spine...

what else could it be?? ;)


On another note, tony, when you find the radiologist, I'd be curious to know: what is that 13" bar passing through? Would it be next to his heart, obstructing his lungs, squeezing his intestines?

It just looks so damn HUGE ... I don't see how he lived for over a year already with that thing in him..

Dear God!
did his posture improve at least?

Well I've left a voice message for our resident radiologist; it's failsafe, who has been a Cellar user from near the very beginning. He hasn't used his account here since February - hope he remembers his password!

I'm guessing it's closer to his posterior than his anterior-- I don't think there's anywhere in front it could be without ripping something up or being obvious.

And the thing which looks like his penis is... his penis.

(sorry, no professional radiological experience, though I did work as a programmer for a company which made CT scanners)

Fine it's his dick
 

OK I now believe it. What else could it be?

I also now believe that the human male member has a density on the order of that of bone. Go figure.


Then again...


I used to do programming work in the x-ray field (we made digital cameras) and we got the images back in 16-bit black and white. This is way too much information to display on any color monitor, you'd need 48-bit color. I think that 32-bit color is about as high as it goes.

You have to decide HOW to display the image, to show the user in color what they need to see. You do this by making up a color table, dividing the black and white range into the available colors, and assigning a specific intensity to each color via histogram equalization. It's possible that the pecker in question isn't actually all that dense, it just hit the high end of the the color table, since they'd bracket the table around the upper and lower limit of the range of intensity of the image.


>yawn<


That's my theory anyway.

Alternate theory: The human tallywhacker IS actually as dense as bone! This has been known for decades, and indeed is part of the reason that this member when fully deployed is known as a........

OK! Just talked with doc Failsafe, who browsed the image from his work PC to tell us:

- Yes, that is the guy's unit, and it's common to see in abdominal x-rays. The image is of a smaller area than we think. It's pretty much just the abdominal area, not up to the guy's neck.

- The male member is definitely soft tissue ("speak for yourself," I said) and not as dense as bone. But soft tissue will show in x-rays, and in this shot failasfe identified such other soft tissue as the heart (to the right of the spine, the hazy area below the word "University"), the liver, the colon, the stomach air pocket, and even a kidney.

- Retractors like this can be more flexible than we might think. The worst case is if it eroded a major organ...

- He was very surprised to see it and especially to see the image released, since it has all the other info at the top. Most medical centers routinely x-ray patients before closing, to make sure there aren't any parts left. The most common part to leave in is a sponge. They now put a barium loop on all sponges, that can be easily seen in an x-ray. He suspects that what might have happened is the radiologist noted the problem but someone didn't take it seriously.

What I find disturbing is that this is what drew your attention first rather than the foot-long steel bar inside the man's torso.

"The UWMC agreed to pay Church $97,000 after accepting responsibility for the mistake."

Now, see, I read things like that, and I can't help but think what might have been. 6 years ago, I got a Double Quarter Pounder value meal from McDonalds for dinner. I get home, unpack it all, take a nice size bite out of the burger, swallow it, and note that it tasted funny. I looked down, and both patties were totally raw.

Now, I wanted to sue immediately. I mean, McDonalds gave out 7 million because a lady was dumb enough to not think her cup of coffee was hot, this was a violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act (I believe. If not that particular one, then some Upton Sinclair-inspired statute). This was serious. But no, my mother told me to call McDonalds and tell them of their mistake.

So, being as I wasn't taller than her then, I consented, went upstairs, got the Yellow Pages, and called. I tell them what happened, and they say that I would get a coupon for a free Extra Value Meal. (never happened). Dejected, I walk down the stairs, and wouldn't you know it, my mother took the patties and put them in a frying pan and cooked them through.

I'm going to take some sleeping pills now...

~mike

Hiya Failsafe!
Can't imagine anyone thinking it's anything else. A bit like that body-painting IODT where all the guys (and at least one girl) were commenting on the puppy-painted boobs but nobody had anything to say about the guy with the elephant whose trunk was his schlong.

I was talking with Bronwyn about this this evening; she is now a nurse practitioner and working in an ER. She says that with the image storage/enhancement equipment they use on radiographs now that when someone has bandaged a cut finger, they can make out the finger, the bandage wrapped around the finger, and the tape holding the bandage...as well as wrinkles in the skin and the cut.

Guess what!

http://cellar.org/pictures/xray2.jpg

Fark had it today: the very same hospital left the very same piece of equipment in another patient (this time a female one)!

<a href="http://www.komotv.com/news/story.asp?ID=15754">The article describing the second case</a>

jesus...
 

What, is December "Free Retractor Month" at this hospital? They must either like giving away their money in hundred-K chunks, or they have Rodney Dangerfield working as a surgeon.

Do you think that doctors do this to their co-workers as a practical joke? To see who can sneak the biggest object into a patient? Maybe this patient is payback to the first guy that did it?

I bet the injury lawyers are fighting in the parking lot over who gets to talk to this person first.

*mental note*

Do not go to University of Washington Medical Center for any operations...

That is seriously fucked up. Even better, at the bottom, there's a little gem of a statistic: at that hospital, between now and 1997, there have been 5 cases of instruments left in the patient. Luckily, none has resulted in a fatality. But that's stilly very seriously fucked up. They say that they've "always counted the smaller things" - yet somehow they miss a crowbar in someone's abdomen. God. They're sooooooooooooo getting sued.

Ah writing for clarity. Now that I re-read my post, they didn't leave "the very same piece of eqiupment" in the other patient. They left one exactly like it.

If they left the very same piece of equipment, they would have had to remove it from patient #1 and put it into patient #2.

Defintely possible. Particularly since the settlement. Perhaps a memo to be more frugal...

I can see it now:

TO: All UWMC Personnel

FROM: The Boss

RE: Our Fuckups

From now on, please try to take operating instruments removed from prior patients to the specified areas of the OR. There have been complaints that said instruments have made their way into other patients. Thank you.

ADDEND: Dr. Farker's "How To Operate" refresher course has been moved to Thursday at 3 p.m. Attendance is mandatory. Or not. You know, whatever.

~mike

I just showed this to a teacher of mine, who had a bunch of x-rays done. She says that this is made up, man.

~mike

Originaly posted by Chewbaccus:
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Did she give a reason or did she simply say she didn't buy it?

If you search around enough on the web, you find out that, sadly, it's *very* real.

Tell your teacher to piss off ;)