What made it even more interesting was the fact that the glass was encased by an 8cm-wide bladder stone.
Editor's note: This article was originally published on March 23, 2022. It has since been updated
Trigger Warning: This story contains details about sexual pleasure and desires that may be disturbing to readers.
For about four years, doctors believed a woman had a really bad Urinary Tract Infection, or UTI. Her symptoms were similar to that of typical lower UTI symptoms, such as leaking, according to New York Post.
However, doctors were beyond baffled when the 45-year-old woman's scans revealed there was a glass tumbler inside her bladder. What made it even more baffling was the fact that the glass was encased by an 8cm-wide bladder stone. Usually, bladder stones are so small they are hard to see with the naked eye, but this was big enough to cover the entire glass.
Once the shocking discovery was made, the woman, from Tunisia, revealed she had used the drinking glass as a sex toy a number of years before. Apparently, she had inserted it into the urethral—the hole which females urinate from—rather than the vagina.
The patient arrived at the emergency department at Academic Hospital Habib Bourguiba where she complained 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 from urinary incontinence.
But she did have a higher than normal red blood cell range, indicating the body was fighting an infection.
This is such a rare occurrence that her case was published in a medical journal, including the astonishing scan and an image of the glass and bladder stone. Though the study doesn't explicitly mention it, it is possible that the woman may have been practicing what’s known as “urethral sounding“.
The risky activity involves inserting a glass or object into the urethra – the tube that urine passes through – to “heighten sexual pleasure and arousal”, Web MD reports.
While there have been earlier reports of people purposefully placing things in their urethra, either due to mental health problems or for pleasure, it is not really recommended.
The motivations most frequently associated with the presence of foreign bodies inside the bladder are of a sexual or erotic nature. “Various objects have been inserted into the bladder and many patients fail to remove them themselves and are very embarrassed to seek medical advice, which is the origin of a clinical picture which is most often atypical which occurs in a patient particular terrain.”
As for the large bladder stone, they tend to develop from hard masses of minerals that grow when urine is not properly emptied from the bladder. However, it also grows around foreign objects lodged in the bladder, for example, a glass tumbler.
Doctors had to perform 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.
"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 good sex education,” the report concluded.
References:
https://nypost.com/2022/03/16/womans-uti-was-actually-glass-tumbler-lodged-in-bladder-for-4-years/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214442021003831#!
https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/what-to-know-about-urethral-sounding
Cover Image Source: Science Direct
