Pea Plant Found Growing in Man’s Lung

Who said vegetable’s are always good for you?

A little pea proved troublesome for a 75 year old Massachusetts man, who suffered coughing spells, an obstructed airway and an inflamed lung. When doctors probed Ron Sveden and found a suspicious dark spot on his X-rays, everyone expected the worst.

A lifelong smoker, Sveden awaited a diagnosis to the tune of lung cancer. Instead, doctors at Cape Cod Hospital found a pea plant growing in his lung.

The pathologists confirmed that the dark encrusted mass lodged in Sveden’s chest was indeed a vegetable- a pea sprouting as a result of traveling down the windpipe into his lung, rather than the esophagus to his stomach. A mundane meal gone wildly wrong.

Sveden and his family were relieved to find out that it was the beginnings of a pea plant rather than cancer that was causing his recent health problems. Once removed, Sveden experienced a quick recovery and a few jokes about the incredible turn of events.

Staring down at a mound of peas, included in his first meal at the hospital, Sveden reports he laughed and then promptly ate them.

Similarly, in 2009, a Russian surgeon claimed to have found a tiny fir tree in someone’s lung, and suggested that the patient may have inhaled a seed. Unlike the tiny fir tree, Sveden’s pea plant had germinated.

David Fiske, a horticulturist and gardens curator at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society asserts that the pea could have continued to grow inside Sveden’s chest. As long as the pea wasn’t pasteurized, Fiske said, “I suppose it could be possible.”

There is no information about whether the meddlesome pea was indeed pasteurized.

Photo by pamramsey on flikr