Today’s diversion from heavy philosophical topics comes from the emergency room.

A young woman “was brought in from the county jail by correctional officers. They were concerned about her altered mental status, and suspicious of drug use. They had a reason to think she was concealing drugs ‘on her person’.” Among the various tests performed was the following abdominal x-ray:

As the blogging ER physician reports:

Yes, that’s a pistol completely stuffed into the vaginal vault. All of a sudden her agitation and thrashing about seemed a lot more important than it had a few minutes before. How the hell were we to get the gun out without the damn thing discharging?

In the end, there was no real option. She was sedated and taken to the OR for an exam under anesthesia. They put a bulletproof vest over the patient’s body to protect the anesthesiologist in the event the gun went off, and had general surgery standing by. The OB-GYN who did the extraction reported a very tense moment when he perceived that the hammer was cocked and there appeared to be a shell in the chamber. An uneventful removal was followed by a moment of letdown when they realized that the device was not, in fact, a gun, but rather a butane torch/cigarette lighter shaped like a gun.

This actually makes sense when you look at the X-ray and realize that the other item in her vagina is a glass crack pipe and its rubber tubing. What good is a crack pipe without a lighter?