It’s our one year podcast-aversary! We thank you for your love with an episode on accidental swallowings and some…not so accidental. Trace also remembers the time when she had an ice cube stuck in her throat.
You Swallowed What? Transcript:
Welcome to Brain Junk, I’m Amy Barton, and I’m Trace Kerr, and it’s time for a Brain Storm.
TK: I’m going to tell you about a man in China. He swallowed a spoon on a dare in 2017 and it got stuck in his throat.
AB: Really. For real?
TK: Yup. Got stuck in his throat. And not only that, but he left the spoon. For. Months. Because apparently it wasn’t bothering him that much. Until he was punched in the chest by one of his firends. I’m imagining this was a college aged guy, and one of his buddies was like “Hey!” you know, right in the chest. And then he was having chest pains and all sorts of stuff, so he finally went in. and the doctors took two hours to remove the eight inch long spoon from his esophagus.
AB: Oh my word! Handle up or handle down?
TK: Handle down. And there’s an x-ray where you can see the spoon right at the, you know the base of the throat where your necklace would be, and it just hung straight down.
AB: You guys didn’t see me “are you kidding me” mom eye roll. You don’t call your kid an idiot, but you know, it’s that face you reserve for extremely foolish choices.
TK: Yeah. Well when I saw the x-ray of the spoon-I don’t have it on here-Amy was like “What?! Is there a picture?”, it kind of got me thinking about people swallowing stuff on accident or on purpose.
AB: There are some terrific hospital billboards in our area, regarding that very thing.
TK: Yes! Well, it happens so often there’s even a name.It’s called ‘foreign body ingestion’.
AB: There’s an insurance code then. Awesome!
TK: I’m sure there is! And emergency rooms see a lot of these kind of things. So fun fact, 80-90% of these objects that are swallowed pass through-just fine. Mostly because most of them are swallowed by kids under the age of three. Common objects swallowed: Coins, buttons, pins, magnets, batteries, small toys, pieces of toys, and toothpicks.
AB: I believe all of that and I’m worried about toothpicks.
TK: Yeah, toothpicks. And I saw a horrible x-ray of a kid who had swallowed those big safety pins.
AB: >gasps in a mom-like fashion< YES! Were they open?!
TK: Yes, some of them were open. I know. Zo went screaming from the room when I was looking at the picture. The kid is fine-the kid is fine!
AB: Good!
TK: IN adults, most accidental swallowing, what do you think the top three are?
AB: Accidental swallowing as an adult. What do I put in my mouth? Maybe a pen cap, ummm, I don’t know. I’m not a chewer. I can’t even begin to imagine.
TK: Well, the most are bones-chicken and fish bones. And then the third one is dentures.
AB: Oh no. Oh no!
TK: I know. I once as a child swallowed an ice cube and got it stuck. But it was one of those round onces with a hole in t...
