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But I did have a 17-year-old boy brought in with a chief complaint of "Rectal pain." He was brought in by his mother. I walked into the room to do the initial assessment and hear this faint mmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMM that grew louder as I got closer to the boy. Mom sat next to the kid, tight-lipped and visibly upset. The boy simply lay on his side on the stretcher, staring at the wall.

I asked the boy, "What brings you here tonight?"

"Go ahead. Tell him!" the boy's mother snapped.

"I put something in my butt."

Well, that explains the hum, I thought.

I finished the exam but was unable to auscultate abdominal sounds because they were obliterated by the hum. I wrote up my assessment findings and put the chart in the "Doctor to see" rack. The MD turned to me and said, "foreign body in rectum?"

"Yup."

"Still turned on?"

"It depends. Are you referring to the foreign body, or to the boy?" another nurse asked.

"Oh, ha ha!" said the MD as he went into the patient's room. Five minutes later he exited, biting his lip.

The MD ordered an abdomino-pelvic X-ray, and ten minutes later every nurse in the front section was in the X-ray reading room, staring in slack-jawed wonder at the pictures of the simply massive, anatomically-correct foreign object that was lodged far, far into the boy's lower bowel.

"Wow," one of the nurses said. "Just frigging wow."

Well, the doctor tells the Unit Coordinator (who of course runs the whole ER) to call up to MedSurg for a room for the boy, gives me a where do we find these people? kind of look, and goes into the room to inform the boy and his mother that the boy will be going upstairs.

I sat down to finish my charting and reviewed the patient's labs, imaging, and vital signs before calling the floor nurse to give report. As I worked, I heard the MD talking to the boy and his mother. I heard the MD say, "You know, kid, I gotta ask. Where on earth did you get that thing?"

After a few seconds of silence, the boy answered softly, "It's my mother's."

The Unit Coordinator looked at me, wide-eyed. The nurse next to me let out a little shriek, clapped her hands over her mouth, and bolted for the medication room. I just sat there with my head in my hands for awhile.

I called report, got the boy packaged up for the transfer, and the Emergency Department tech rolled the kid upstairs accompanied by his mother, who looked straight ahead without expression all the way past the nurse's desk.

Nobody laughed after they were gone. We were all simply mortified. We felt just awful for this kid's mom.