Thousands of people are hospitalized each year in the US for sticking foreign objects up their backsides.
While these often include sex toys, water bottles or even the occasional light bulb, during the holiday season the objects take on a particularly festive theme.
Two emergency medicine doctors told DailyMail.com there is a steady stream of people coming to the emergency department (ED) with objects stuck in their behinds throughout the year.
But Dr Barry Hahn, a New York-based emergency medicine doctor, said: ‘During the holiday season, people tend to become more festive and more inventive with the objects that they want to celebrate with.
‘Kids usually swallow these things, but adults tend to place them in strategic locations lower down the body.’
Both doctors revealed they had treated people with Christmas ornaments stuck up their behinds, as well as model snowmen and model Christmas trees.
In more bizarre cases, they’ve retrieved a candy cane, miniature models of the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building and even a Buzz Lightyear figurine.
The doctors say in many cases, people had inserted the objects into their anus for sexual pleasure.
The above is an X-ray of a patient who came in with a candy cane lodged in their backside
Doctors also told DailyMail.com about previous situations where people arrived in the ER with Buzz Lightyear stuck in their behind
Few further details could be revealed about the festive cases because of privacy rules, but physicians repeatedly warn people not to stick household items, or festive decorations, into their backsides.
In a TikTok from Dr Adam Gaston, the emergency medicine physician listed items to keep away from your buttocks, including model nutcracker soldiers, as well as porcelain and plastic Christmas trees.
Dr Stuart Fischer, an emergency medicine physician in New York city, revealed to DailyMail.com the wide range of items he has had to retrieve from people’s backsides – festive and other.
The physician has removed everything from deceased animals to dental products and even a door knob.
He said: ‘I did see a gerbil one time, but unfortunately it did not survive because it was asphyxiated.
‘We knew it was there when we did an X-ray that revealed the animal’s skeleton.’
He added: ‘In another case, a person came in with a family-sized toothpaste dispenser stuck in them, the one where you push on the top and the toothpaste comes out.
‘To describe how it happened, he said, “I was talking to some friends and then I sat down on the chair and then I realized there was something uncomfortable, and I felt some discomfort, and so that is why I came to the emergency room.”‘
The above shows two items that doctors urged people not to put up their butts. Both were being sold at Target
The patients were treated successfully using anesthetics to help relax the anal muscles and allow doctors to pull the objects from inside them.
But Dr Fischer highlighted the complications someone could face from placing household items into the opening.
Household items placed into the rectum could end up stuck because the rectum’s tight walls can create a suction-like reflex, making it difficult to remove an object if it does not have a base.
Objects within the rectum may shatter under the pressure, which can cause a perforation or cut to the bowel, leading to bleeding and a possible infection.
Doctors warn people who have placed objects inside their buttocks to seek help immediately.
In most cases, surgeons remove the objects the same way they went in. They sedate the patient, which relaxes the anal muscles allowing the objects to be extracted.
In cases where this does not succeed, patients may need surgery.
An analysis from researchers at the University of Rochester in New York found nearly 40,000 Americans were hospitalized for getting objects stuck in their rectums between 2012 and 2021, the equivalent of almost 4,000 per year.
Men accounted for nearly eight in 10 cases, with the most common group being males in their 20s and early 30s, who made up a third of all related ER visits.
Bottles, jars or bottle lids were the most common non-sexual devices found stuck in people’s rectums, they found, accounting for 10 percent of cases.
