When 'this is a stick-up' means you're really in troubleSeptember 19, 2005. Mainichi News. 
Shukan Jitsuwa (Sep. 29)."This young woman arrived at the hospital with a green pallor to her face," recalls Masahiro Matsushima, a urologist at Tobo University Hospital. "I could tell from her face right away what her problem was. It was late at night and I suspected she had inserted something.
I took a look and there, protruding from her urethra, was a rounded glass rod that turned out to be a mercury thermometer. She had been playing with herself and it had become lodged in her urethra and she couldn't remove it. She was weeping with shame and fear when she came to the hospital.
"You don't want to be sticking things up there," Matsushima warns Shukan Jitsuwa (Sep. 29) readers. "In some cases we've had to operate to remove them."
Thanks to the easy availability of adult-oriented entertainment on the Internet and elsewhere, it seems young Japanese are becoming initiated to sex from an increasingly younger age. Some are wont to experiment and it is the nation's urologists who are often summoned to the rescue when foreign objects become lodged in one orifice or another.
Recently Dr. Matsushima published a report in a medical journal of his more noteworthy experiences in extracting these objects.
"Patients are embarrassed and don't have anyone they can talk to," he tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "Doctors are bound by medical ethics to maintain confidentiality, so not much of what they see in the course of their work gets disseminated to the public at large. But the fact is, quite a few people engage in what could be described as foolhardy activities."
Accidents involving the male organ, for example, generally fall under one of two possible categories. The first occurs when the penis is inserted into a ring or hole from which it cannot be extracted. The other involves objects that become jammed into the urethra.
"In either situation, if left untreated, it can cause the penis to putrefy," says Matsushima, who relates the case of one patient who came to him in agony from a metal band bound tightly around his member.
"I couldn't get it off with an ordinary surgical tool," he relates. "So I wound up using a diamond cutter used by fire department rescue teams. He was lucky; a smaller clinic might not have had any recourse but to ...," he makes a cutting gesture with an open hand.
So many mishaps have occurred due to experimental masturbation that Dr. Minoru Ikeda, operator of a urology clinic in rural Kumamoto Prefecture posts advice on his Web site to disseminate correct information about ED (erectile dysfunction) and other matters related to sex.
"Thanks to adult videos, more people are getting their hands on vaginal speculums to use as sex tools," says Ikeda. "There are also sites on the Web that introduce self-stimulation by insertion of objects into the urethra. This is highly unadvisable," he says, shaking his head.
Most jammed objects can be extracted by means of an endoscope and forceps, but some require greater effort.
"Some men fasten things to the root of their penis to keep them erect, and doze off to sleep with it still on. Some older men do the same thing to prevent bedwetting, but this can really cause serious problems. And allowing foreign objects to remain in the urethra can cause stones to form in the bladder. When we go in for surgery to remove the stones, that's when the other objects turn up."
Another specialist recites to Shukan Jitsuwa a litany of objects he's removed from people's apertures, including mini rotary vibrators, old used condoms, light bulbs, phallic-shaped vegetables, eggs, cigarette filters and dry cell batteries.
"A vagina should be kept clean," he cautions. "If you start putting strange things in it, they might stay put. And this can cause all kinds of grief."
(By Masuo Kamiyama, contributing writer)