It is a totally extraordinary intervention that some members of the hospital staff of the Sainte-Musse emergency room, in Toulon, France, were confronted with this Saturday evening. An elderly man showed up there with a shell… in his anus! “An apple, a mango or even a shaving foam… We are used to finding unusual objects inserted where they shouldn’t be. But a shell? Never ! said a staff member.
According to information from Var Matin, the hospital management supervised the organization of the partial evacuation of the establishment to the main hall, for safety. Services further away have been confined, with the help of security and firefighters. The new patients were diverted for a few hours to other hospitals, because of this bomb threat … to say the least particular.
“We then had to treat our atypical patient, who immediately ensured that the shell was demilitarized”, testifies a member of the hospital. But it was still necessary to make sure that the shell was indeed demilitarized! Hence the call for a demining unit. In the meantime, the Samu has set up a tent outside the establishment so as not to put the patients in intensive care at risk.
The deminers quickly ensured that there was no possibility of an explosion. “They reassured us by telling us that it was a collector’s shell from the First World War, offered to the Poilus”, explains a doctor. The surgeon in charge of the patient performed visceral surgery to remove the object from the anus. “It rarely comes out where it came in,” he comments.
All’s well that ends well for the elderly person. The shell was safely removed.