Doctors Found Pea Growing Inside Lung of Patient

Doctor Found a pea sprouting inside a patient's lung

Physicians delivered the good news to patient Ron Sveden — he did not have cancer. What they found instead inside his lung was a pea sprouting.

“A couple days in a dark, wet environment, I’d sprout too,” Dr. Jeff Spillane said Thursday. “It definitely had a sprout.”

The 75-year old Sveden had feared he had cancer when he went for a consultation at Cape Cod Hospital during Memorial Day.

The former teacher and current owner of a retail fish business had experienced progressively deteriorating health during recent months. He knew he had emphysema but the coughing bouts were becoming more severe and frequent.

“Everything seems to be going downhill,” said Sveden. “I seemed to be tired a lot more. I didn’t want to do too much. My appetite was diminishing.”

Arriving at the hospital, he was told he had dehydration and pneumonia. An X-ray showed a small, suspicious dark spot which a later biopsy revealed negative for cancer.

The doctors then scoped the inside of the lung, suspecting that it was a tumor. But the extracted mass turned out to be a pea.

“It was pretty grungy, but it looked like a pea,” Dr. Spillane said. The pathologist confirmed that it was indeed a vegetable.

The whole operation lasted just half an hour. Sveden has now spent three months in the hospital and a week of rehabilitation to fully recover. He expressed amazement that a pea can actually cause such dire health problems.

The doctors explained that it is possible that people can inhale small objects, but usually people choke and spit the object out, but in the case of Sveden, it lodged into his lung and did not notice it until it grew inside and produced symptoms later.

Posted by George Daniels on Friday August 13 2010, 11:13 AM EDT. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0