Pearl turns up after decades -- in ear

ATHENS, Ga., Dec. 20 (UPI) -- A Georgia man had a pearl from his mother's necklace stuck in his ear for 41 years, but didn't realize it until now.

Emergency room nurses at St. Mary's Hospital in Athens discovered the pearl when Calvin Wright came in with bronchitis recently, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday. Dr. James Dempsey removed the pearl, and Wright kept it.

When Wright was 5, he and his sister, Regina, got hold of their mother's necklace.

"My mom was at work and the babysitter was watching us," Wright recalled of the incident in Chicago. "My sister broke the necklace, and the pearls went everywhere."

Regina apparently shoved two pearls in his ear. Wright, in pain, was taken to the hospital.

"The doctor said, 'I got it out,'" he said. "I remember I got two green lollipops. I didn't think more about it."

Wright said the only effect he suffered all these years was struggling to hear himself speak.

Wright was stunned no one found the pearl until now.

The first thing he did was call his sister. "She said, 'You're kidding me, I thought they got that thing out. I said, 'No, there were two.'"