You cannot pea serious! Doctors amazed to find vegetable growing in pensioner's lung
By Daily Mail Reporter
11th August 2010
A retired teacher who had been struggling for breath for months was amazed when doctors told him there was a PEA plant growing in his lung.
Ron Sveden, from Brewster, Massachusetts, was already fighting emphysema when his health took a turn for the worse.
'I was not doing too well, a lot of coughing, I was very listless,' the 75-year-old said.
His wife Nancy was so alarmed by his deterioration that she called for an ambulance and he was rushed to hospital on May 31.
Doctors took X-rays and found his left lung had collapsed and the pensioner feared he had developed a tumour after a grainy spot was found. But his doctors were baffled as they could not find any evidence of cancer.
They were amazed when samples revealed Mr Sveden had the green vegetable sprouting inside his lung.
Ron said: 'I was told I had a pea seed in my lung that had split and had sprouted. It is probably about a half-an-inch which is a pretty big thing.'
Doctors speculated that Ron had eaten a pea that 'went down the wrong way' during a meal and ended up in his lung, and then sprouted leaves.
Dr Jeff Spillane who treated Ron, told the Cape Cod Times: 'It was small enough to get down there but big enough not to get out.'
Ron said: 'Whether this would have gone full-term and I'd be working for the Jolly Green Giant, I don't know. But, I think the thing that finally dawned on me is that it wasn't the cancer.'
Through it all, Mr Sveden hasn't lost his sense of humour. He said: 'One of the first meals I had in the hospital after the surgery had peas for the vegetable.
'I laughed to myself and ate them.'
His relieved wife added: 'God has such a sense of humour. I mean it could have been just nothing, but it had to be a pea, and it had to be sprouting.'
Mr Sveden is now recovering at home where friends and neighbours have sent get well presents of pea seeds and canned peas.
His case follows that of Artyom Sidorkin, a Russian who was found to have a five centimetre fir tree growing in his lungs in 2009. Like with Mr Sveden the medics had assumed the 28-year-old had cancer.
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