When we reach our teens, we start to get more curious about our bodies. It's only natural. Some of us figure out what our sexual organs do at a very young age, and others just don't know anything about their bodies at all.
This depends on whether you got adequate sex education in school or from your parents, if any, that is.
Unfortunately, some kids never get that vital knowledge, which can lead to a multitude of problems that rear their ugly heads later on in life.
That's not supposed to go there, or anywhere.
A teenage boy in Jiangsu province, China got himself into a whole world of hurt when he stuck a sewing needle up his urethra – a vessel in the penis which urine passes through – and kept it there for two whole weeks before seeking medical attention.
The curious 13-year-old had done it to himself because of just that – curiosity.
After constant pain (naturally), and bleeding while urinating, the boy was sent to hospital, where an X-ray scan showed the sewing needle – measuring 9cm long – literally clogging up his urethra.
“He only came here because he could not bear the pain any more. We saw a needle after giving him an X-ray check. It was very long and had gone quite deep,” said Guo Yunfei, the surgeon who removed the needle from the boy's urethra in a procedure that reportedly lasted more than an hour.
Though most of us would know that sticking foreign objects into the urethra of all places will just bring with it potential infections, the doctor makes it a point to remind everyone that the urethra is strictly a no-go area, no matter what your sexual pleasures are, if any.
However, the doctor did admit that this wasn't the first time he came across a young patient who had something they weren't supposed to have inside them. All of the previous incidents occurred during a time in which the patients were starting to get curious about their bodies during the onset of puberty.
“We receive such young patients every year with all sorts of strange things. What we saw most in the past were electrical wires and earphone cords, and later we saw needles and magnetic beads,” Guo said.
The rising importance of sex education.
According to a 2019 survey cited by the South China Morning Post, of more than 3,600 participants aged between 10 and 18 across 17 provinces in China, just roughly 20 percent of them said they received adequate sex education from family or teachers.
Worryingly, more than 10 percent of participants say they never had a chance to learn about it from anyone. Not even from school or from their families.
The survey, which was led by the China Foundation of Culture And Art For Children, also found that half of the participants in the study reported feelings of panic when puberty hit.
These findings reflect the dire need to make sex education a more openly-discussed topic, not just in China, but the entire world – so that incidents like that of the 13-year-old don't occur at such an alarming frequency.
Read more Life stories:
Pig kidney gets transplanted into a human in world's first landmark surgery
Man pooped from penis and ejaculated from anus for two years before seeing doctor
Ejaculate at least 21 times a month for lower risk of prostate cancer, Harvard says
Follow Mashable SEA on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Telegram.
Cover image sourced from Jafar Ahmed / Unsplash and Weibo / South China Morning Post.
