A woman who thought she had a simple urinary tract infection, got more than she bargained for during a hospital visit when doctors discovered a glass tumbler inside her bladder.
A 45-year-old Tunisian had been complaining about always needing the toilet, but a scan quickly revealed that it was not, in fact a simple infection – she had an 8cm-wide bladder stone inside her.
But it was the contents of the stone that baffled doctors at the Habib Bourguiba University Hospital in the eastern city of Sfax.
For encased in a bladder stone was a small drinking glass, which had apparently been put up there a few years ago for “sexual pleasure”.
Her urine had shown a red blood cell range of 23-25, when the normal human will only show four or less, a report states.
The object was removed via open surgery, and she was discharged two days later – she is now thought to be fully recovered after the incident at the end of 2021.
In a report about the case, on sciencedirect.com, the doctors who deal with the matter said: “Apart from any underlying psychological condition, the humiliating nature of the pathology itself often means that the diagnosis is established late at the stage of complications: recurrent urinary tract infection, bladder lithiasis, vesicovaginal fistula which is the consequence of erosion of the vesicovaginal wall weakened by inflammation.
“The extraction of the foreign body is usually done endoscopically with, if possible, extraction of the associated lithiasis.
“In case of voluminous lithiasis or in the presence of associated lesions, open surgery is indicated.
“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.”
