Wendy Zukerman

So maybe if she'd had a big meal before all this happened...

That somehow the sperm survives.

And one thing that Neil read in the case report made him think that maybe this did all happen quickly.

So what the case report actually says is that her stomach was empty when she had surgery.

But Neil, knowing what he knows about medicine, reckons that that could be from vomiting.

So maybe what happens is she swallows the sperm and it's somehow protected in the saliva and the seminal fluid.

And then maybe she vomits and that act of vomiting propels a tiny bit of sperm

out into the little hole in the stomach that the stab wound created.

Right.

Right, because when it exits the stomach, like you say, it's not as if the egg is just hanging around saying, hello, I'm right here.

The egg, it should be in the pelvis and the hole was in the stomach.

So we still have a Hot Wheels ride to go down.

Now, once the sperm gets out of the stomach, it moves into this liquidy space that's between the organs in the abdomen.

It's called the peritoneal cavity.

And this peritoneal cavity is actually a nicer place, we think, for the little fragile spermies to survive and thrive because the pH in the peritoneal cavity is about the same as vaginal fluid.

Ah, okay.

Which is the stuff that protects the sperm as it travels through the vagina, right?

for those who have a vagina.

Now, there have been two other case reports that we found where sperm was found in the peritoneal fluid of men, suggesting that maybe it can survive there.

And so from this peritoneal cavity, the sperm then would have had to have swum past the intestine into the pelvis and ultimately to reach the egg.