The reasoning was ordinary enough. The bag was about to expire, so he finished it. Within a day, the man in his 70s was at a hospital in Canberra, Australia, with abdominal pain and vomiting, unable to pass gas or move his bowels.
A CT scan showed dilated loops of small bowel and what the radiologist read as ordinary faecalization at the transition point, consistent with an adhesional obstruction. Two days of conservative management failed. He developed evolving peritonitis and went to theater. What his surgeons found, and described in the Journal of Surgical Case Reports, was a firm mass they could palpate through the bowel wall. They opened a healthy segment and delivered roughly 500 milliliters of undigested peanuts. He was discharged on day eight.
