The Desktop Candle Up the Butt: An ER Doctor’s Bizarre Removal and an October Twist
When people learn I’m an emergency room doctor, they always ask me two things: “What is the sickest thing you’ve ever seen?” and “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever pulled out of someone’s butt?” Dr. Kenji Oyasu, a Chicago ER physician, says those questions come up all the time—and the stories are stranger than fiction. Among the countless “stuff up the butt” cases he’s seen, one stands out for its size and its seasonal flair. A man arrived with a personal problem after a night with his girlfriend, admitting they had “got a little crazy” and “put something up there” they couldn’t remove. The object was real: a Yankee Candle desktop jar—whole, not just the top.
In This Article:
The Case That Shook the ER: A Full Desktop Yankee Candle Up There
The patient described the night as one of their “little crazy” adventures, admitting they had “put something up there” and could not remove it. This wasn’t a small prank; it was a fully intact Yankee Candle desktop jar, not a toppled wick or a stub. “This was a Yankee Candle. And not the mini, stocking-stuffer variety, he assures,” Dr. Oyasu recalls, underscoring the audacity of the object. How a candle makes its exit is a matter of medical strategy, not mischief. The team focused on an exit plan rather than a grab-and-pully attempt.
Extraction Under Anesthesia: The Procedure
For truly large objects, doctors can’t simply reach up and pull them out. Suction can create a vacuum that sucks the object back in. Instead, surgeons prepare as for a major operation: intubation, anesthesia to paralyze the patient, and placement on a ventilator. The goal is to relax every muscle so the clinician can safely reach up and grab the object. It’s a controlled, surgical process—even when the problem started as a prank.
Pumpkin Spice Wins: The Scent That Confirmed the Exit
Once the team identified the object, they even placed bets on what the scent would be. “This time, I won the bet, pumpkin spice. It was October, it was easy,” Oyasu recalled, confirming the scent profile as a final, humorous touch to a strangest-of-straights scenario. The pumpkin-spice victory is a reminder that even medical stories can wear a seasonal face, and that the autumnal mood sometimes travels where you’d never expect.
A Larger Pattern: Rectal Foreign Bodies Still Crash Hospitals
Beyond individual anecdotes, a 2023 study in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine finds that nearly 4,000 people are hospitalized each year for foreign objects in the rectum. The average patient is 43 years old, and about 78% are male; 40% of these cases require hospitalization. More than half of the foreign bodies are sexual in nature, including vibrators, anal beads, or other sex toys. Stranger still, in 2022 a French senior citizen arrived with a World War I artillery shell lodged in his rectum, leading to a partial evacuation of the hospital amid bomb-scare concerns. What these stories reveal is a medical reality behind curiosity, embarrassment, and human fallibility.
