Oh, sweet malpractice...

[Chewbaccus]

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.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by dhamsaic
Eeeew man. Coulda at least blurred out the penis n' nuts.

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". :-)

[Joe]

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.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by Joe
It's not that pecker looking thing, I don't think, because it's stopping more x-rays than his entire leg.

No, Joe...it's *on top of* his leg...his pelvis, actually. It's not stopping *more* flux, just stopping *additional* flux.

Then again, by the softball-size gonads who knows he could just be really healthy.

Not if he keeps X-raying them. :-) And doesn't change doctors.

If he lays on a raft in a pool does he point north?

ROFL! That's the funniest thing I've heard all day.

Wouldn't you miss a tool that size afterwards?

I dunno...dham didn't miss it.

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

[jennofay]

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

[CharlieG]

Originally posted by Joe
...snip... How did he find out, by setting off metal detectors? ...snip...

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)

[Joe]

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.

[Undertoad]

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)

[ndetroit]

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..

[warch]

Dear God!
did his posture improve at least?

[Undertoad]

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!

[russotto]

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)

[Joe]

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........