I dread seeing a patient being brought to my room by ambulance. Although the EMS guys are friendly, they usually bring difficult kids who are going to require a lot of attention. A few weeks ago I saw this cute little boy on a stretcher being brought to my room. "Prolapsed rectum," the EMS said to me as he walked by. I went into the room and heard the story from his parents. The boy had been constipated and was trying a little too hard to poop, and "something bad happened to his rear end." The mother was devastated and said she had never seen anything so awful in her life. I put on a pair of gloves, had the parents stand the kid up, and took off his diaper. Preparing myself for the worst, I looked at the prolapsed rectum. I didn't see anything. Uh, where else would a prolapsed rectum be? I stopped for a moment, panicked and wondering how I could miss something that should be so obvious. The EMS saw it, the doctors at the hospital he was transferred from saw it, and yet I was seeing nothing. Embarrassed and worried that I was misunderstanding the problem, I said to the dad, "Will you please show me what you are talking about?" The look he gave me screamed "you idiot" more than words ever could. "It's right here," he said, pointing at absolutely nothing. He did a quick double take and his face was quickly as red as mine. We shared an embarrassed laugh, and I left the room, relieved that the prolapsed rectum had fixed itself and that I wasn't as big of an idiot as I led myself to believe.