WILMINGTON, N.C., Sept. 17 (UPI) -- A 50-year-old North Carolina man says his health deteriorated to dangerous levels after he accidentally swallowed a piece of a plastic utensil.
Wilmington home remodeler John Manley said he endured pneumonia and depression symptoms, and even gagged up blood, before doctors found an inch-long piece of a plastic utensil in his left lung, The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer reported Thursday.
"I was coughing up a lung," he said. "That's an exact statement."
Manley suspects the plastic item may have gone down the wrong tube while he was consuming a drink while eating at a fast-food restaurant.
"I'm a gulper," he told The News & Observer. "I gulp stuff. I always have."
Dr. Momen Wahidi, interventional pulmonology director at Duke University, said the fact Manley went more than a year without realizing he had swallowed the plastic item is not uncommon for adults.
"Unfortunately adults often don't recall the incident, so the suspicion of a foreign object is very low," said Wahidi, who removed the item in a surgery last week.
