New England Journal of MedicineFair warning, this is pretty grim – but in that sort of ‘I want to stop watching but can’t take my eyes away’ sort of way.
A woman from Los Angeles, California, grew concerned after noticing bubbles in her urine.
The 72-year-old decided it was time for a trip to the doctor – who informed her that poo was leaking into her bladder from her large intestine, causing the foamy pee.
That screwed up face you have right now is about to get worse – here’s the video:
It’s hypnotic, isn’t it? It’s almost like watching churros being made… only more shitty.
The woman was diagnosed with what doctors call colovesical fistula – a rare disease that creates ‘an area of congested edematous bladder mucosa with a central orifice that extruded gas and feculent material’, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
In layman’s terms, there’s a connection between her intestine and bladder that allows colic gas and poo to escape and mix into her urine, creating the foamy effect the woman was experiencing.
Universal PicturesThe video shows a stream of faeces entering her bladder after an explosion of bubbles ‘escaped’.
As per the New England Journal of Medicine, the patient underwent an operation – a robot-assisted colovesical fistula repair with sigmoid colon resection – to close the faecal gap.
‘On follow-up 2 months later, the patient was doing well, with no recurrence of symptoms’ according to the journal entry.
Warner Bros.In order to understand the biology of the disease further, here’s Healthline’s explanation:
The colon, which helps form stool to be released through the rectum, sits above the bladder. The bladder stores urine before it’s released through the urethra.
A thick wall of tissue normally separates the colon and the bladder. Surgery or other trauma to this part of the body can cause a fistula to form. When an opening develops, the result is colovesical fistula, also known as vesicocolic fistula.
The symptoms of the condition can be rather severe, ranging from a burning sensation when you urinate, to diarrhoea to abdominal pain.
According to Healthline, more than half of colovesical fistula cases are the result of diverticular disease. It can also be caused by inflammatory bowel disease (particularly Crohn’s disease) and cancer of the bladder or bowel.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.