Man needs surgery after swallowing a cellphone

Doctors say a 29-year-old man in Ireland needed emergency surgery after a cellphone became lodged in his stomach, which authorities say was purposely swallowed in an attempt to smuggle into prison.

What kind of phone? A flip phone, like a Razr? Or was it something more modern, like a Sony Xperia Z Ultra? Hopefully something liquidproof?

After admitting to swallowing the phone, the man was brought to the emergency room where X-rays confirmed the item was lodged in his stomach. Doctors waited 18 hours to give the phone time to move through the man’s digestive system, but it didn’t budge, leaving doctors with two options: extract it via gastrointestinal endoscopy or make an incision and extract it that way.

When the gastrointestinal endoscopy failed, doctors decided to make a small incision in the man’s stomach, called a laparotomy, which is rarely used when foreign objects are swallowed. However, doctors determined that using current endoscopic methods was too dangerous, so they decided to proceed by cutting him open.

According to doctors, the phone was successfully retrieved, and the man was released from the hospital a week later; a subsequent follow-up showed the man suffered no apparent side effects as a result of the surgery.

Whether he became the laughing stock of the prison yard is unclear. I can only imagine what shape the phone would have been in had it excavated out of his body naturally. That’s one phone I wouldn’t want to borrow.