Needle in the intestine - how dangerous?

Factual Questions
1

My mother apparently swallowed a needle. At least, one has been found in her intestine, surrounded by a lot of scar tissue, and causing her intermittent very bad pain. (My theory is that it was left behind during her last surgery, but I’ve no proof.)

Anyway, her doctor told her he’ll take it out if necessary. Um. How can it not be necessary? She’s got a pointy bit of metal migrating through her body, in painful ways. And how is she supposed to live with the pain even if it’s not life-threatening?

I’m bewildered. Beginning with how she managed to swallow it in the first place.

2

Hacking open someone’s abdomen and digging out small pieces of metal in their intestine does entail risks of its own.

3

Needles in the intestine goes in the unhealthy category, especially if they get to the large intestine. If the intestine is punctured, you get peritonitis. That’s the same risk you run from a ruptured appendix.

Could be pica ?

4

Regular sewing needles are quite different from surgery needles. I would think a good radiologist should be able to tell the difference.

5

If the needle is encased in scar tissue, it may no longer be a threat to your mother’s health.

Speaking of needles, I remember reading the unlikely case of a woman who managed to have her periocardium (the sack around the heart) penetrated by a sewing needle. Seems she fell asleep while darning some of her son’s clothing, turned over, and the needle pierced her chest. She couldn’t find it when she awoke and figured it was just lost in the couch. She started getting chest pains and going to the doctor, who wrote her off as a hypochondriac. Finally, she convinced one of them to do a chest x-ray. When they saw the needle, they pretty much freaked, begged forgiveness for not believing her, and scheduled her for an immediate surgery to remove the needle.

6

They found it via CT scan. They told her it was 3cm long. Which sounds about the right size for a sewing needle. Now, she does hold pins and needles in her mouth while sewing, but she doesn’t remember swallowing one, and I can’t imagine somebody not noticing that. Anyway, she has an appointment on Tuesday to find out what will happen. I didn’t hear whether it’s in her small intestine, or large, but I wondered about peritonitis myself.

7

First, mom finally remembered when she swallowed that needle, and I’m irritated with myself that I didn’t guess it myself?

A couple of days before she started complaining of pain, mom called with a hoarse voice, saying she’d swallowed a hard bit of crust on a cookie, and scratched her throat. Well, in fact, she’d found a needle on her kitchen floor, put it on the counter, and made cookies with a graham cracker crust, that the needle somehow got mixed into.

Moving forward: the doctor she was working with thought it had been left in during a previous surgery, and was in no danger of moving because it was encapsulated in scar tissue. Multiple calls to his office went unanswered and unreplied, thanks to the holiday season. Her pain continued. Finally she woke up in the middle of the night on Christmas eve, having somehow subconsciously put all the pieces together, and realised when she had swallowed the needle, which made the story very different. But she still couldn’t reach her doctor, and by this point she was pretty sure she didn’t want to trust him with her health, since he didn’t seem concerned about it anyway. So she talked to a doctor at her church on Sunday (she barely knew him, but desperation is great incentive for an introduction), who finally - out of all the people she’d talked to - seemed concerned for her welfare, and he told her to bring her CT scans and meet him at the ER after church. Somebody at the church called a friend who went in to work and got the CT films at the closed radiology office (remarkable really), and when she got to the ER she was asked "Are you the needle lady? and they took her right in.

Well, one endoscopy, one colonoscopy, and two laparoscopic incisions later, the needle was found to have migrated through the wall of her stomach or intestinal tract and lodged itself in the wall of her gall bladder. So all’s well that ends well. Except that it might have turned out very different.

Poor mom. They could have dealt with it days earlier, but hey, Christmas is really important. Can’t miss that. And after all, she was only in pain, she could wait.

I oughtta put this in the Pit.

8

[riddle hijack] If a Little League baseball player swallows a couple of safety pins, what position does he play?

With any luck, he’ll be a pin shitter by tomorrow. [/riddle hijack]

9

Your mom didn’t notice she was chewing on a needle? That’s really weird.

10

She did, she thought she’d gotten a piece of walnut shell - she certainly didn’t mean to swallow it. She swallowed it, it scratched her something awful. She talked to me on the phone that day and sounded awful.

I’ve swallowed fish bones before. I could see how it could happen. But ugh.