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A story straight from Emergency: True Tales from the Nation's ER's compiled by Mark Brown, M.D.

The story is titled "The Wish"

In an upper-income community hospital Emergency Department, a fifty-year-old matron complained of mild abdominal pain and fever. The patient was on an antidepressant, but she had no other significant medical history. Her physical exam was unremarkable. Lab tests did little to further the diagnosis. I decided to proceed with a pelvic exam. A female nurse set the patient up in the GYN room.

As I approached the room, the nurse shook her head in disbelief suggesting we were getting close to a diagnosis. The pelvic exam revealed that the patient's labia were pinned together with three large, rusty safety pins.

The patient apparently had a long psychiatric history, including obsessive behavior focused on her inability to bear children. Two weeks earlier, the patient had purchased a small chicken at the market and had inserted it, piece by piece, into her vagina. She had pinned her labia to keep the chicken in place and was waiting for it to develop into a baby.

The patient was subsequently admitted to the psych unit, but not before she was washed out with two liters of Betadine and the entire chicken was accounted for.

HT to Lisa Bursini at TPW.