Jun 16, 2009

The Penile Trap

Parents of toddlers are so busy installing stair gates and electrical outlet covers — or, as child safety experts such as myself call them, “thing-a-ma-jigs” — that they have likely neglected to address the biggest death trap in their house:

THE TOILET SEAT!

(Fairly) new evidence suggests that more and more little boys are getting their John Thomas crushed by falling toilet seats.  Ouch.  In most every case, the youngster was trying to urinate on his own and had lifted the toilet seat, only to have it fall back down.  An industry report states that wooden toilet seats are becoming more popular, possibly explaining the increase in injuries.

While researcher Dr. Joe Philip and his colleagues typically see just one or two such cases a year, if any, they have treated four different two- to four-year-old boys with penile crush injuries in the past several months.

“Penile Crush”:  Also a stellar name for a rock band.

“Thankfully all of the four had only the foreskin swelling, but obviously there’s a lot of anxiety for the parents and the kids,” Philip said. All of the boys were kept in the hospital overnight until they were able to urinate, but none of them suffered lasting physical damage, he added.  Easy for him to say.

In related news, the number of boys spotted urinating in the bushes has increased dramatically in the past few months.