A 42-year- old man has ruptured his colon following a three-hour search for something to read on the toilet.
Barry Turtle of Dorking, Surrey, suffered a massive internal hemorrhage last Tuesday as he attempted to locate his book of hilarious golf jokes while simultaneously suppressing a bowel movement. It is estimated that he had been putting off the toilet visit for as long as five days prior to the movement, hoping that the book would just show up.
Paramedics gained access to Mr Turtle’s property shortly after being alerted by concerned neighbours at around 5pm, and discovered the man lying unconscious in his kitchen with his legs crossed and a prominent reddy-brown stain on his gusset area.
He was taken to Dorking Community Hospital, where surgeons extracted around 4 kilograms of compacted faeces from his abdominal cavity and stitched up the tattered remnants of his bowel. Doctors are hopeful that Mr Turtle will make a full recovery.
Glorious afterlife
“Oh it was awful,” said next door neighbour Flora Threlfall. “At about lunchtime I heard him swearing through the wall, banging about, smashing things, stomping up and down the stairs.
“I knocked for him at about half three to make sure he was okay, and when he opened the door he was pale and sweating and standing very oddly, like a ballet dancer. He was looking right past me with this distant, glazed look in his eyes, as though he could see his ancestors bathed in light and calling out to him from the glorious afterlife.”
Relatives who examined the property after Mr Turtle fell unconscious report finding hundreds of books on the floor, as well as upturned and damaged items of furniture strewn throughout the house. In a sign of Mr Turtle’s eventual desperation, relatives even found bloody scratch marks in the carpet and walls where he had resorted to digging for the book with his nails.
The book – Golf’s Funniest Jokes, by Jim Chumley – was eventually found in the cupboard under the bathroom sink next to the cotton buds where it always goes.
Master Heywood 