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Pea sprout plucked from Cape man's lung

Black Phantom

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Unreal...

By L. Finch, Globe Correspondent

It wasn’t cancer that doctors discovered growing inside a 75-year-old Brewster man’s lung in May after an x-ray of his chest showed a small dark spot.

Doctors feared the worst when Ron Sveden, already suffering from emphysema, was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital, coughing with a collapsed left lung and pneumonia. But after multiple biopsies, doctors discovered not a tumor -- but a pea seed germinating inside Sveden’s collapsed lung.

They removed the sprout, about a half of an inch tall, and Sveden has recovered.

“I must have ate something and it went down the wrong way, that’s all they could tell,” Sveden said in a telephone interview today. "It was too big to get through" from coughing.

“But I’m doing fine now, not only am I happy but the family is happy,''' said Sveden, whose moment in medical history was first reported by the Cape Cod Times.

Though extremely rare, pulmonary vegetation isn’t unheard of. Last year, doctors discovered a fig tree, measuring 5 centimeters, growing inside the lung of a 28-year-old Russian man, according to news reports.

Meanwhile, Sveden said he hasn’t lost his appetite for peas. Sveden was first rushed to the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis on Memorial Day.

“One of my first meals in the hospital after the pea came out, the vegetable was peas,” Sveden said. “It all turned out very positive.”
 
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