Stuck

Against my better judgment, I am posting 3 stories about being stuck in the bathroom. Hold your nose!

Mongolia, August 2010
A Chinese man spent 2 days stuck up to his neck in a cesspit after slipping in the toilet. Nobody came to patronize the facility, so his rescue had to wait for a passerby to hear his cries. When emergency services dropped a ladder down to him, it took him 20 minutes to climb up, but only seconds to seek relief. "As soon as he came out, he rushed to a nearby pond to have a bath."

Paris, November 2010 When a 69-year-old French woman hadn't been seen for a while in her apartment building, her neighbors thought she had gone on vacation. Meanwhile, they launched a petition to stop the banging they thought was the result of a resident doing home repair work. The noise was the old lady trying to summon help from her windowless 2nd-floor bathroom. When she was finally rescued by the fire department, she had been trapped for 3 weeks. She survived physically by drinking tap water, and mentally by taking lots of showers and repeatedly brushing her teeth. She emerged thin, weak, and "at her wits’ end."

Kansas, February 2008
The stories above pale in comparison to the plight of a 35-year-old woman stuck on a toilet for 2 years. Her 36-year-old boyfriend had repeatedly asked her to come out of the bathroom, but she refused - possibly suffering from an abuse-related phobia, so he brought food and water to her until finally alerting authorities. At first, the woman refused help, but was convinced otherwise. Her legs had atrophied and she had become fused to the toilet seat. "I don't think anybody can make any sense out of it," said a neighbor. The woman spent several weeks in the hospital and her boyfriend spent 6 weeks on probation for misdemeanor mistreatment. She regained her health; he won the lottery.

The miniature above from Gallery O is the work of contemporary Hungarian artist Udvardy Bogi.