Suicide by intracerebellar ballpoint pen and other fascinating tales from PubMed

August 20, 2008 9:15 PM

A Good Poop is an entertaining blog by an occupational and environmental health student who enjoys finding oddities in medical and scientific research from PubMed. (via Look at This...)
posted by madamjujujive (42 comments total)

From the page:

"Lunetta P, Ohberg A, Sajantila A. Suicide by intracerebellar ballpoint pen. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2002 Dec;23(4):334-7."

So you could he made the pen...disappear?
posted by turgid dahlia at 9:19 PM on August 20, 2008 [3 favorites]

Oh crap.

Say he made the pen. Say.

Maybe I'll try that toilet paper one.
posted by turgid dahlia at 9:19 PM on August 20, 2008

Romain N, Brandt-Casadevall C, Dimo-Simonin N, Michaud K, Mangin P, Papilloud J. Post-mortem castration by a dog: a case report. Med Sci Law. 2002 Jul;42(3):269-71.

Today's A Good Poop life lesson: Don't die alone with animals in the house if you want an open coffin. Man's best friend my ass.

Great find. Thanks!
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 9:25 PM on August 20, 2008

It would have been nice to live my whole life without ever once reading about traumatic orogenital contact. There's just no way to make lemonade out of life's traumatic orogenital contact lemons.
posted by stavrogin at 9:38 PM on August 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: There's just no way to make lemonade out of life's traumatic orogenital contact lemons.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:52 PM on August 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Wow, I'd never really seen that "Related Articles" column in PubMed before. From Related Articles:

What was different in our case from previous ones was that the genitals were spared from destruction; the kotatsu frame may have prevented the dog from approaching this region. The extensive destruction within the short period of about 3 days may be explained by the fact that the victim was naked when he died.

posted by ikkyu2 at 9:58 PM on August 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

This blog is like my wet dreams.

What's the worst that could happen?" Syphilis, that's what. Sweet, sweet syphilis.

Sweet, sweet syphillis indeed. Nothing I love me more than a grotesque medical condition.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 10:00 PM on August 20, 2008

"Lunetta P, Ohberg A, Sajantila A. Suicide by intracerebellar ballpoint pen. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2002 Dec;23(4):334-7."

Funny. I've begun thinking about this exact idea during the occasional business meeting. Not suicide exactly. More like, "oh I'm sorry to have to leave early, but I unexpectedly need to go to the hospital now."
posted by salvia at 10:06 PM on August 20, 2008 [3 favorites]

turgid dahlia: TA-DA
posted by puke & cry at 10:23 PM on August 20, 2008

Behar DM, Edelshtein S, Ben-Ami H, Mansano R, Edoute Y. Human bite on penile shaft from oral sex as a portal of entry for streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. Isr Med Assoc J. 2000 Dec;2(12):945-7.

All I can do is echo the blogger, who summed this one up perfectly: Jesus fucking christ.
posted by Justinian at 10:24 PM on August 20, 2008

For some reason, I picture a Zippy strip in which Zippy repeats "traumatic orogenital contact" in his Pinheaded way.
posted by Joe Invisible at 10:47 PM on August 20, 2008

Kunz J, Gross A. Victim's scalp on the killer's head.

Eponysterical.
posted by _dario at 10:52 PM on August 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

When I worked for a medical journal as a proofreader we would amuse ourselves when we were supposed to be working by searching back issues for particularly gory/lurid/bizarre case reports, which we then photocopied and kept on file to squick out new proofreaders. After a few years of this, we had quite a collection: from leeches used in facial reconstructive surgery (medically kinda exciting, and great news for accident victims, but we kept it for the graphic color pictures of horribly mutilated faces covered in leeches) to various "look what some freak stuck in his ass" case reports ranging from light bulbs to (and I quote) "an economy-sized peanut butter jar" (evidently one can't extract such an object from one's rectum without creating suction that risks pulling one's guts out -- they finally worked a flexible hose past the jar and were able to insufflate the cavity while removing the jar).

What sticks with me from that one is the offhand comment by the attending physician that the injury was sustained because "the patient stated he had fallen in the shower while washing his dog".

Uh-huh.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:00 PM on August 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

This is why I don't play rugby, folks.

Or water polo.
posted by Mitheral at 11:00 PM on August 20, 2008

"an economy-sized peanut butter jar" (evidently one can't extract such an object from one's rectum without creating suction that risks pulling one's guts out -- they finally worked a flexible hose past the jar and were able to insufflate the cavity while removing the jar).

"You think you have it bad, kid? When I was a young man, not too much older than you are now, I almost had my guts sucked out of my ass by a peanut butter jar."

"Gee gramps. Thanks? I guess this is why mom tells me not to talk to you alone, huh?"

"You'd best watch your mouth, son, or I'll go find that empty Jif jar I threw out yesterday."
posted by secret about box at 11:10 PM on August 20, 2008 [3 favorites]

On the plausibility of Superman's X-ray vision
posted by milkrate at 11:15 PM on August 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

Romain N, Brandt-Casadevall C, Dimo-Simonin N, Michaud K, Mangin P, Papilloud J. Post-mortem castration by a dog: a case report. Med Sci Law. 2002 Jul;42(3):269-71.

Now that's the dog's balls.
posted by Kinbote at 11:19 PM on August 20, 2008

A little kid got his dick bitten off by an insane person! That's fucked up!
Love the commentary.
posted by hjo3 at 1:22 AM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

Hmm. I tried commenting on the blog, and wound up getting an XSS cross-scripting attempt (blocked by NoScript) to some site called jimmycrackcorn, which seems like malware on a stick.
posted by Shepherd at 2:27 AM on August 21, 2008

Lunetta P, Ohberg A, Sajantila A. Suicide by intracerebellar ballpoint pen. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2002 Dec;23(4):334-7.

It's like he didn't even know about fountain pens.
posted by srboisvert at 3:03 AM on August 21, 2008

You know what I always say? You can't beat a good poop, amirite?

Given the potential volume of word of mouth recommendations this site will get then, how can our business model fail? [NOT 1990's-IST!]
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:46 AM on August 21, 2008

Lunetta P, Ohberg A, Sajantila A. Suicide by intracerebellar ballpoint pen. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2002 Dec;23(4):334-7.

Ooooookay.

When I finally escaped the clutches of The University with undergraduate degree, I took a job as an aide on drug abuse/rehab program floor of a psychiatric hospital in a Large Urban Center In Gulf Coast Texas. This was in the very late 70's ...

I decided I really didn't need to be working there the Monday I came in and learned that one of the patients, 13 years old if I remember correctly, murdered his roommate of 14 while said roommate was sleeping, using a Bic ballpoint pen the night before.

Happy days.

I always use a fountain pen now ... I hate Bics.
posted by aldus_manutius at 5:11 AM on August 21, 2008

"the patient stated he had fallen in the shower while washing his dog". That's actually pretty much the standard excuse for rectal foreign bodies, although the dog-washing is kind of an original touch. Many of these things are really not that unusual to those who work in operating rooms. For example, the article on close-range shotgun blasts to the face had a series of 15 patients-not unusual for a reasonably-sized medical center. Unfortunately if you are planning to shoot yourself with a long gun under your chin and hesitate at the last second, the gun tends to slip forward enough so that it discharges up the front of the face rather than through the brain, resulting in rather gruesome injuries that require years and years of reconstruction and often still have cosmetically poor results. Many of these patients become recluses due to their appearance; even in the hospital I have seen a few that keep a towel over their heads at all times, even going into to the OR, to hide their faces.

Nail guns were also mentioned in attempted suicides; that is pretty common as well. A surgeon I used to work with wrote up this report a couple of years ago about a patient who shot himself in the chest 17 times.

As far as eye catching titles in general, while preparing for a lecture recently I came across "Hydraulic Compression of Mice to 166 Atmospheres". I wonder if there should be a Rule 34 for scientific research.
posted by TedW at 5:22 AM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

Victim's scalp on the killer's head

"I'm wearing his face on my head -- it's me."
posted by raygirvan at 6:27 AM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

"the patient stated he had fallen in the shower while washing his dog".

Million to one shot doc. Million to one.
posted by sanka at 7:02 AM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

Many of these patients become recluses due to their appearance; even in the hospital I have seen a few that keep a towel over their heads at all times, even going into to the OR, to hide their faces.

Yeah, but a few go on to stardom in certain comics...
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 7:49 AM on August 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

insufflate - my new, favourite word. Thanks BitterOldPunk.
posted by tellurian at 8:14 AM on August 21, 2008

metafilter: insufflating the cavity
posted by quonsar at 8:38 AM on August 21, 2008

"he made the pen...disappear?"

Oh, I totally hated that scene in the Dark Knight. I really could have lived without paying to see that.
posted by mecran01 at 8:45 AM on August 21, 2008

But would you have payed to live without seeing that?
posted by blue_beetle at 9:58 AM on August 21, 2008

Needs more corn.
posted by trondant at 10:08 AM on August 21, 2008

That's actually pretty much the standard excuse for rectal foreign bodies, although the dog-washing is kind of an original touch. Many of these things are really not that unusual to those who work in operating rooms.

Oh, God -- flashback to someone who once told me they SWORE they heard this "true tale from an ER" once. It was on the late shift of some big-city ER, when suddenly a man came running in through the door screaming -- he was completely naked and had an entire television vacuum tube stuck inside his butt. (Well, not the WHOLE thing -- part of it was sticking out.) He ran around the ER screaming, while orderlies and doctors and security guards were chasing him, trying to catch him, to calm him down and get him to tell them what the hell was going on, and also trying to cover him over with a blanket. Finally they cornered him, and he stopped screaming at least, but stood, mute, cowering from everyone. They figured he just needed a minute to calm down, so they stood nearby, saying soothing things, and preparing a gurney for him or something. But after their guard was down a little, he panicked again, started screaming again, and bolted past everyone, ran out the door and out into the street -- where he was promptly struck and killed by a passing city bus.

Everyone's shock and sympathy for the poor guy was mixed with the disappointment that "dammit, now we'll NEVER know what the hell that was all about."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:26 AM on August 21, 2008 [7 favorites]

BitterOldPunk - Three years ago I visited the family home of a new friend while traveling with a high-school buddy. Though they had ever met us before, they welcomed us into their home like we were family, and we ate dinner with them in a crowded apartment kitchen table. After the tasty, warm meal we sat around while the kids played on the floor and the adults talked politics and trash. The father, a retired surgeon (do you know where this is going? maybe.) was quite animated in his opinions and speech. We marveled at their art collection, some of it done by the missus, crowded a little on the wall of the living room. After the candles had died down and the mothers and kids had gone off for the wash-up-and-go-to-bed routine, the conversation grew sleepy and we got up to leave. The father, still animated with guests, insisted that we see his ‘collection’ before we left. I think the son protested, but don’t remember. We were led to the father’s office, which had 70’s dark fake wood finish walls, where he clicked on a pale fluorescent light. Mounted on the wall was a frame maybe a meter or two wide and one meter tall, like one of the paintings in the living room, only there were labels inside. Little typewriter written labels. Attached to those labels were bits of things, some recognizable. a fork. part of a razor. glassware. broken glassware. wood fragments. wood nonfragments. bullets. bottles. one was for mayonnaise. it was small (but, oh, not small enough). a coke can. the old kind with the pull top. he proudly proclaimed that these were all objects he had removed… from people.

From their… yeah. yeah. awkward.

You could say he was holding on to them for posterior’s sake.
posted by ilovemytoaster at 2:14 PM on August 21, 2008 [7 favorites]

this is so freaking awesome.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 2:15 PM on August 21, 2008

I'm sure that someone somewhere with a sick sense of humor and access to PubMed has put together the definitive list of things people have inserted into themselves with traumatic results.

I also know that I won't be the one googling for it.

ilovemytoaster -- I'll bet his OR nurses HATED him. Cuz someone had to, you know, clean all that stuff to make it suitable for framing...
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:48 PM on August 21, 2008

Here's one risk I'd never previously anticipated:

Human bite on penile shaft from oral sex as a portal of entry for streptococcal toxic shock syndrome.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:04 PM on August 21, 2008

EmpressCallipygos "dammit, now we'll NEVER know what the hell that was all about."

Well, I'll speculate: That wasn't a TV tube, it was a CRT monitor tube. The guy trolled the wrong forum.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 4:40 PM on August 21, 2008

There was a great hilarious article in NEJM a few years back about cases of men who got their willies stuck in the end of the vacuum cleaner nozzle, and the resulting injuries. The best part was the excuses - "Vacuuming in housecoat, got too close to nozzle..." etc. The authors having such fun gloating over the blatant idiocy of the excuses made it a truly charming article.

There was another one somewhere about men who had died by using various farm implements to hoist themselves up for purposes of auto erotic asphyxiation. That one was a bit dark, but a good sign that there are still unplumbed depths in the whole medical voyeurism scene.
posted by sneebler at 5:35 PM on August 21, 2008

There's a lot of good stuff in PubMed.
Bat breath reveals metabolic substrate use in free-ranging vampires
posted by lukemeister at 7:53 PM on August 21, 2008

Spiers AS. Attempted suicide or hitting the nail on the head. Case report. J Fla Med Assoc. 1994 Dec;81(12):822-3.

A case is reported of attempted suicide by hammering nails through the skull into the brain. This unique attempt at self-destruction was unsuccessful and the treatment, initially by an untrained first-aider and then by a neurosurgeon, was surprisingly simple. There were no long-term sequelae.



Wow. Just wow.
posted by damn dirty ape at 2:43 PM on August 22, 2008

This is the worst thing I've read in a while.
posted by damn dirty ape at 2:46 PM on August 22, 2008

There were no long-term sequelae.

dda, Thanks for reassuring me that my nail-head-hammering hobby is safe. I tried to tell my family that, but they never believed me until now.
posted by lukemeister at 5:14 PM on August 22, 2008