Woman Who Thought She Had A UTI Finds Glass Tumbler Inside Her Bladder

A Tunisian woman who went to the hospital thinking that she had a urinary tract infection found out that there was a glass tumbler stuck in her bladder for four years.

The 45-year-old woman, who hasn't been identified, reportedly went to the emergency department at Academic Hospital Habib Bourguiba complaining of UTI-like symptoms and bemoaning that she felt like always needing to go to the toilet. However, when physicians performed an x-ray scan of her torso, it revealed that there was a glass tumbler seemingly lodged inside her bladder, New York Post reported.

The glass tumbler was encased by an 8-centimeter-wide (3-inch-wide) bladder stone. Bladder stones are normally so small they are hard to see with the naked eye and can grow around foreign objects lodged in the bladder. Bladder stones usually develop from hard masses of minerals that grow when urine is not properly emptied from the bladder.

Following the shocking discovery, the woman told the doctors that she had used the drinking glass as a sex toy a number of years before and that she had inserted it into the urethra rather than the vagina. She reported that she had also suffered cystitis, inflammation of the bladder, several times before. However, she said that it had never been investigated.

Medics who examined her at Habib Bourguiba University Hospital said there was no blood in her urine. She also hadn't suffered from urinary incontinence. However, analysis of her urine revealed she did have a higher than normal red blood cell range, indicating the body was fighting an infection, the Daily Mail reported.

The interesting case was reportedly published in a medical journal, which also included images of the astonishing scan and an image of the glass and bladder stone.

Following the discovery, the doctors at Habib Bourguiba University Hospital performed a cystolithotomy on the woman, which is a type of open surgery that is performed to remove a bladder stone. After removing the bladder stone, they then cracked it open to expose the still-intact glass, which had been in her body for years. Two days after the surgery, the woman recovered and was healthy enough to go back home.