Last year I was admitted to a psychiatric ward on multiple occasions. With a primary diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, I tend to be impulsively self-destructive… this gets me into a lot of trouble very often. (Sigh.) During one of my long and painful involuntary admissions, I approached my psychiatrist two weeks in with an ultimatum: “You release me or else I’ll challenge your decision to keep me involuntarily by contesting the form.” I was obviously grasping at straws with this, because, as a patient with many previous formal admissions, I didn’t have much in the way of a defence. My confrontational strategy was most ineffective– he blatantly refused to even consider releasing me. In a fit of rage and desperation, I quickly retreated to my room. Scrambling about in search of something to hurt myself with, I came across… the toothbrush.
Upon discovery, I immediately grabbed the toothbrush- Colgate 360º and almost 9” in length- and forcibly shoved it down my throat and into my esophagus, where it reached its final destination which was my stomach.
The words “what have I done…” played over and over again in my head as I emerged from my room and sat uncomfortably with a bunch of patients gossiping about the recent developments in the ward. Overcome with guilt and panic, I approached the receptionist at the nursing station during shift change.
I mustered a quiet, “I need to speak with my nurse”.
“I’m sorry, your nurse is busy right now so you’re going to have to wait.”
… at which point I oh-so-subtly declared: “I swallowed a toothbrush.”
The following hours were… interesting… to say the least. After x-rays, a meeting with a gastroenterologist, and seclusion in the psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) for many hours, I was taken to day surgery to have an upper endoscopy for the retrieval of the “foreign object”. Just when I thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, the anaesthesiologist greeted me and we both stopped dead in our tracks. It was my guy-friend-that-I’m-sort-of-ish-dating’s father. After a few very awkward/uncomfortable few moments, he inserted an IV (yes, gasp, a doctor successfully did it) and pushed two meds, one of which was propofol. I woke up in recovery 1.5-2 hours later feeling stoned and with a croaky voice. I was informed that the toothbrush removal didn’t go exactly as planned, and the anaesthesiologist had to intubate me (place a breathing tube in my trachea) when I started turning blue from lack of oxygen.
So, I was transferred back to PICU and I dozed for a while until I become aware of a sharp pain at the back of my throat. Panicking with an overriding feeling as if I had something stuck there, I rushed to the washroom to discover that something was at the back of my throat. I predicted that this would be interesting, so I positioned myself in front of the nursing station, reached into my mouth, and produced a foot long metal wire with a loop at the end. The nurses demanded that I hand over the wire, and the whole situation was never brought up again, I suspect because it “never happened” so there was “no evidence to destroy”.
In retrospect, I see why my psychiatrist felt so strongly against releasing me or changing my status to voluntary. Needless to say I had no basis to file for a review of my form, and was kept in PICU. The aftermath was unpleasant, with the worst consequence being that I never saw the guy I was dating ever again. (I’m guessing the father didn’t maintain his approval after that incident.)
Not a good experience, 0/10. I don’t recommend swallowing toothbrushes.
TL;DR- Never swallow a toothbrush no matter how desperate you are, because your prospective husband’s father will find out, perform the PVC challenge on you, and leave mysterious and dangerous foreign objects lodged in your esophagus.