From the Green Room: A 'Brush' with Medical Incompetency
Thursday, May 20, 2010 
Imus’s mistrust of the medical profession has always struck me as somewhat misguided. I believed paranoia and hypochondria have fueled his doubts about doctors and their competency. But then comes a story from Great Britain about a woman who died after doctors failed to spot a six-inch long toilet brush handle embedded in her buttocks.
Maybe the I-Man has something there.
We’ve all heard the horror stories about folks getting the wrong limb amputated, being treated for something other than what they were hospitalized for, or having perfectly healthy organs removed due to a paperwork glitch.
But how do you miss a six-inch toilet brush sticking out of a person’s backside?
Apparently, the bizarre bathroom injury happened after a drunken fall in 2005. Which, itself begs quite a number of burning questions:
How does one “accidentally” get a six-inch toilet brush stuck in their nether region?
Just exactly how drunk to you have to be to fall hard enough to jam it in your bum? 
But most important: How on earth did doctors fail to notice this particularly foreign object lodged in her sphincter...over the course of FIVE YEARS?
You would think,, if nothing else, an object of that size and shape would present itself somewhat conspicuously. It’s difficult to imagine that a routine physical wouldn’t reveal something that was out of the ordinary. LIKE A SIX INCH TOILET BRUSH HANDLE STICKING OUT OF HER BUTT.
Where were this woman’s friends and family? Where was the concerned inquiry during holiday in Brighton? “Um…what’s that rather large bulge at the back of your bikini, love?” Didn’t ANYBODY notice she was sitting about a half-a-foot higher at the dinner table over the past five years?
Medicine is not an infallible science. But these physicians’ powers of perception are just a little more beyond the pale.
No wonder why some folks are against National Health Care.
