"He's had a pear stuck in his rectum..."

What this episode is about

A general surgery resident recounts a humorous and unexpected experience during a night shift involving a rectal foreign body case, highlighting the chaotic and often bizarre nature of her medical training. The conversation touches on the challenges and realities of surgical life, including the unconventional and sometimes crude experiences shared among medical professionals.

Key takeaways

• In surgery, every hour is prime time—especially when dealing with unexpected patients and their peculiar predicaments.
• A pear in the rectum proves fruit can cause serious discomfort—bad comedy or a ripe opportunity for medical stories?
• From the O.R. to awkward chats—hospital life is a mix of miracles and mishaps, often with patients getting the punchline.
• Sedation: the unsung hero in rectal foreign body removal; saving the day one pair at a time, literally.
• Who needs fiction? The most bizarre tales come straight from the ED—a testament to the creativity of human errors.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Dax Shepard (Host) · 7 min speaking
• Hannah (Host) · 5 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Dr. Mo Hannah, KD, Westfield, Massachusetts, Warren Body
2. 3:00 – 6:00: KD
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Grey's Anatomy
4. 9:00 – 11:54: Clementine, Dr. Mo Hannah, Pool Noodle

Notable quotes from ""He's had a pear stuck in his rectum...""

• Hannah, where are you other than the hospital? Obviously.

  about Dr. Mo Hannah · at 0:22

• So, my co-resident will call him KD. He was on the night shift. He gets a consult from the ED, rectal foreign body. Okay, fine. It's like 4:00 a.m.

  about KD · at 1:42

• If this was an episode of Grey's Anatomy, this is what they would do. I hope I'm not spoiling the story, but they would take a teeny tiny mouse.

  about Grey's Anatomy · at 7:14

• So, I pull it out. IT'S A CLEMENTINE.

  about Clementine · at 9:51

• Oh, that's great. Can I do one honorable mention that I was not part of this case, but I wish I was. It was a pool noodle. Oh my no.

  about Pool Noodle · at 10:54

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Dr. Mo Hannah — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at 0:22
  A general surgery resident calling in from the hospital who narrates the rectal foreign body case and her role in resolving it.
• KD — Person · Referenced clinician (co-resident) / key actor in story · 2 mentions · first at 1:42
  Hannah’s co-resident on night shift who first evaluates the patient in the ED and attempts multiple extraction techniques before escalating to the attending/OR.
• Warren Body — Person · Referenced patient (anonymized/possibly pseudonymous) · 1 mention · first at 1:24
  Name used by Hannah when describing her first patient of 2026 involving a rectal foreign body; not the main pear/clementine case.
  Appendix, I'll take it out. Also, I wanted to say my first patient of 2026 was a rectal for Warren Body. That's not this case.

Products & tech

• Clementine — Product · Incidental mention · 2 mentions · first at 9:51
  Mentioned as part of a humorous story about a medical procedure involving foreign objects in the rectum.
• Pool Noodle — Product · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at 10:59
  Mentioned in passing as part of a humorous anecdote about unusual objects found in medical cases.

Places & events

• Westfield, Massachusetts — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 0:26
  Mentioned as the location where one of the speakers is based, adding context to the conversation.
  I'm in Western Massachusetts. Western Mass.

Media & podcasts

• Grey's Anatomy — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 7:14
  Mentioned as a reference point for discussing a hypothetical medical procedure in a humorous context.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 Oh my god. And you're in scrubs. I just walked out of the O. I'm so sorry. Wow. That's great. Cuz we were a little late.

0:09 Amazing. We've never talked to someone straight out of the O. What if we had a real time?

0:14 That'd be exciting. Cuz you knew the surgery was going to take place at a certain time and you like told Emma like it would be ideal if we could talk at 11:55.

0:22 Oh. Hannah, where are you other than the hospital? Obviously. I'm in Western Massachusetts. Western Mass.

0:30 And this hospital looks nice. The bed is like wooden. Have you ever been to Western Mass? The whole place is a story book.

0:36 It is. This is the call room. This is the best I could do. Yeah. It looks like you're in a Civil War hospital with that wooden bed for him. I bet wood is like really bad as far as collecting germs.

0:46 But this is where the doctors hang and sleep. Well, I mean, we don't sleep here much. There's just no time.

0:51 People have definitely fornicated on that bed behind you. Rest assured, 100%. Yeah. Also, would you agree with me? And I say this with love and fellowship. Nurses and doctors are perverts.

1:02 Absolutely. Well, yeah. You're choosing to get inside the body and deal with goo.

1:08 So, also I'm a general surgery resident. You're so smart. I feel jealous and scared.

1:13 I want you to operate on me someday. Okay. What do you want me to do? Whatever pops up, I guess.

1:21 Appendix, I'll take it out. Also, I wanted to say my first patient of 2026 was a rectal for Warren Body. That's not this case.

1:29 No way. It's going to be a great year. Yeah, that's good luck. I walk in 5:00 a.m. and they're like, "Oh, do we have a case for you and it's not the one you're going to tell us? This is

1:40 I got the wrong job." So, my co-resident will call him KD. He was on the night shift. He gets a consult from the ED, rectal foreign body. Okay, fine. It's like 4:00 a.m. He's almost done. And he's like, "Okay, I'm going to go take care of this." So ED calls and says, "I've got this patient down here about 50-year-old guy came into the ED with abdominal pain. He's hemodynamically stable, but he's had a pear stuck in his rectum for 8 hours."

2:08 A pair. A pear. The fruit. A fruit. The pear with the stem. You know, just a pair.

2:14 I get it. It's a little bit Stop saying you get it. You've been getting all of these. Yeah, the pair is very inviting. Think about it.

2:21 Not for butt. Sure. Because it's a little narrower at the front. Okay. Okay. Never mind. You're disappointed.

2:28 Inserting wise, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's nature's butt plug. Okay. Okay.

2:34 Okay. Yeah. So, I'd been there in 8 hours and he was having abdominal pain. Comes into the ED. So, the ED had gotten an X-ray to see kind of where the pair was to see if there's any free air. And really quick, did the patient say, "Hey, it's a pair." Or from the X-ray in the pear shape, it was concluded it was a pair.

2:53 The patient said there is a pair. Why not? Okay, great. Sorry, I got to add one more thing. Sorry, Monic. I just grabbed the bridge of her nose.

3:17 I just want to hear it. I know. I know. You got to be really careful when you're using a pear because if you've eaten a lot of pears, you know when they get ripe, they get so soft. Like he definitely was using an unripened pair cuz you can just put your fingers through it on accident. Like those pears get so tender when they're right. I mean, we had somebody else on earlier who had a vibrator, a magic bullet up there, and he was respectful enough to wait till the battery died before he came into the hospital. So, I'm surprised that he didn't just like, I'm just going to wait till this disintegrates in me.

3:53 He was in pain, though, right? It was the pain. And also, my first case was a vibrator this year.

3:58 Okay, great. Okay. And it had died. So, anyway, they got an X-ray. Okay, it's in there. There's no free air, meaning unlikely that it's perfed. CT is a lot better for looking for free air, but it wasn't indicated. He's hemodynamically stable. So KD, he goes down to the ED, he evaluates the patient, guy looks okay, gets the story, goes to grab some supplies to try and get the pair out. They give the patient some medication. They can't do full sedation in the ED. They can just kind of relax them a little bit, and he gives it a shot. He does the Foley catheter, inserts the Foley past the pair, blows it up, tries to pull it out, but it's slipping past the pair.

4:37 He tries ringing forceps. These are it. I brought them. Are those the exact ones he used?

4:42 They're the exact size he used, but not the pair. I mean, oh, the pair. Wow. Double entandra.

4:48 The pair was not ripe enough. It was like slipping off. The guy's rectum was getting a little bit irritated, so they got another X-ray. He's still stable. X-ray still looks fine, but the pair is still in there. So, next step is KD has to call the attending surgeon. So, as residents, we have to staff consults with our attendings, and if there's someone that needs to go to the O, we have to call them, let them know it needs to go to the O. Going to the O for rectal foreign body doesn't necessarily mean you're getting an operation. It just you can use more sedation. They can monitor the airway, make the patient more relaxed.

5:20 Do they have a speculum for the anus? Like, is there a way to get in there and spread the whole thing out? There are anal dilators. It's like a speculum. I've also used an actual speculum. So, we're all rolling in at like 5:00 a.m. for our shift and we hear Katie on the phone calling in this console like, "Hey, I've got this guy in the ED. He's got a pair stuck in his rectum. I've done everything I can. Like, I can't get this pair out." The attending has a full day of cases. So, he's like, "Okay, I'll call the O, see when they can add it on.

5:50 It's not an e case, but it needs to be done." So they add it on after his second case. The guy gets prepped and is taken to the O. So he goes on his way. This is where I come into the story. So I was in the O, drop my patient off in Pacio, the recovery unit, and I head over to the O board to see what's going on, see what other cases have been added. And then one of the anesthesiologist said, "Hey, they need you an O5 stat." And I was like, "Oh, funny. Haha. That's where the pair was." And then someone comes in and I was like, "Where is my intern?" And then they're like, "Oh, he's in O5. They've been in there for what feels like forever. They've got to be done." So, finish up what I'm doing. Still not back. So, I'm going to go check out the situation.

6:34 Uhhuh. I wasn't really prepared for what I saw when I walked in the room. So, the patient's in lethtomy position, which is when you're giving birth, your legs are like up in the stirrups, which isn't abnormal. Like, when we're doing rectal surgeries or we're down in the pelvis, it's very common to be in that position. My internship stand up. He's on the side of the patient like pushing down on the abdomen trying to like squeeze it out.

6:57 Yeah. Like some counter pressure. The attending's at the foot of the bed. He is trying everything he can. He's so frustrated. Like they have the anal dilators. They have the speculum type thing. They're trying to like get out with everything's just like slipping past her. They can't get to it.

7:14 If this was an episode of Grey's Anatomy, this is what they would do. I hope I'm not spoiling the story, but they would take a teeny tiny mouse. Okay. And then they would stick him up there. Okay.

7:27 Cuz then the mouse would go eat it. Oh, but then they'd have a fat mouse to get rid of. You'd have to keep the tail attached to something.

7:34 Exactly. You have a handle on the mouse's tail, so you're able to pull him back out, but he goes up there and eats some of the pear.

7:41 Isn't that a kind of good idea? I think it's a great idea. Thanks. I have a different one. I just want to throw one out there. So, now we'll have competing theories.

7:48 Okay, I think you need to screw into this pair. Now, obviously, it's going to be very dangerous to try to get like a wine screw in, but if you could see it directly, if it was that dilated and you could get a wine opener in there, you could bear into it and then pull it out.

8:03 But what if you push it further up? Well, you'd have to be real delicate screwing it in.

8:08 Okay, we have the counter pressure. We have the attending surgeon at the foot of the bed. There's another resident scrubbed. The scrub tech, the circulator nurse are both just dead inside. Everyone just wants this pair out and they cannot get it out. So I start walking towards the end of the bed and my chief resident is in there and he's like, "Hey, what size are your hands?"

8:26 Oh yeah. So I hold up my hand. He holds up his hand. My hand is like half the size of his hand. He's like, "Okay, you want to give it a try?"

8:37 Oh boy. So I look at the attending and I was like, "I can give it a try." He has lost all hope. They're about to open this guy up. He's like, "Sure. Okay, fine. Give it a try." So, I scrub in. I get my gown on, get my gloves on, and grab big pile of lube.

8:53 Sure. And I go in the rectum. I'm like this far. Oh my god. To your elbow. Oh, so you could never got a wine screw in there. No way.

9:00 No, it was pretty far in. So, I'm in there. I grab the pair. I have the pair in my hand and I try and pull it out and I get stuck on the pelvic ring. It's like my knuckle holding the pear. There's not enough room. I was like, there has to be enough room. Somehow I adjust my fingers.

9:15 Slides out. You're a hero. Do people cheer? They literally cheer. So, as everyone's cheering,

9:23 I realized I felt something at the tip of my fingers when I was in there. Uhoh.

9:28 And so I go back in. Now you're just doing it for fun. Yeah. Now you're showing off.

9:34 The pair was kind of tattered from all of the attempts. So, I was like, it was probably just a piece of pear that had like flown off, got like pushed up, and I grab it. It's perfectly round. I thought, this is probably just a stool ball.

9:47 Sure. I love that. That's cute. So, I pull it out. IT'S A CLEMENTINE. IT'S A FRUIT SALAD.

9:56 OH my god. He's just missing peaches. He's just sticking up so many fruits up there.

10:04 I bet his ass smell wonderful. Ew. But when fruits turn. Gh. Didn't tell anyone about the clementine.

10:12 Oh my god. Clementine. That is wild. Well, you must have thought I should go up for a third time.

10:20 Exactly. I did. You did. You pulled out a banana. Banana. Okay. Because now you thought he was so smart with the pear because of the shape. But not the clementine. That's just a circular object.

10:30 It does unravel my original argument. I acknowledge. But why didn't he use a banana? Like if you're going fruit

10:36 too easy amateur hour. He's like been there done that. Yeah. BDDT. Wow. Fruit salad.

10:42 Do people buy you a drink after work for this kind of thing? No. I think they still probably owe me one. I did get applause throughout the day. I'm now known as Tiny Hands.

10:52 Oh. Oh, that's great. Can I do one honorable mention that I was not part of this case, but I wish I was. It was a pool noodle. Oh my no.

11:07 How people are so creative. So they cut the pool noodle obviously. Full circle. Full circle.

11:13 Yeah, but they're 3 ft long. In fact, I bet that's what happened. He was using it and then it broke off. Like he's probably holding on to the big end of it, you know.

11:22 Jesus, why do you understand these brains so well? Seems all very natural and organic to me. It's all intuitive.

11:30 Oh, wow. This was fun. Oh, I loved this. Thank you. I have to do a shout out to my husband. He was a for sure day one armchair. I wish I could say I was the day one, but he was day one and they got me hooked.

11:41 Oh, so you got a genius on your hands. I do. Yeah, I guess you both do. A couple of geniuses.

11:48 Lovely meeting you, Hannah. You too. Thank you so much. All right. The light.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in ""He's had a pear stuck in his rectum...""?

Dax Shepard (Host), Hannah (Host).

What is ""He's had a pear stuck in his rectum..."" about?

A general surgery resident recounts a humorous and unexpected experience during a night shift involving a rectal foreign body case, highlighting the chaotic and often bizarre nature of her medical training. The conversation touches on the challenges and realities of surgical life, including the unconventional and sometimes crude experiences shared among medical professionals.

What is mentioned in this Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Dr. Mo Hannah, KD, Westfield, Massachusetts, Clementine, Warren Body, Grey's Anatomy. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is ""He's had a pear stuck in his rectum...""?

The episode runs 12 min; the transcript is about 2,460 words in 60 timestamped sections.

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