Doctors Remove Plastic Wendy's Fragment From Man's Lung
For nearly two years, a 50-year-old man in North Carolina has suffered mysterious coughing fits, fatigue, and pneumonia. Now he's back to normal after doctors removed a 1-inch piece of plastic from his lungs, which he apparently inhaled while enjoying a soft drink.
"I like to take big gulps of drink," the former home remodeler said. "I don't know of any other ways of it getting in there."
"NC doctor removes plastic fragment lodged in lung" [Associated Press] (Thanks to John!)
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Comments:
Only in America. They're like vacuum cleaner when it comes to fast food.
part of a utensil, in his lungs for two years...he needs to learn to use a straw O_O
Further evidence that fast food will kill us.
@LupusGray:
Because nobody, anywhere else in the world, drinks liquids in big gulps. Especially when they're, say, thirsty.
I personally prefer straws, though.
I wonder if the doctor found any severed fingers in there.
I'm having a hard time believing someone could have sucked that chunk of plastic -- the end of a Wendy's fork or spoon -- and be totally unaware of it. That shard does not go down someone's windpipe without him/her noticing it.
Is this Wendy's ... or "fast food's" ... fault? How can it possibly be?
Mom always said to chew 100 times......
Looks like a spoon handle to me (or fork/knife, but Wendys usually only has spoons in my area). I'm betting this was in a Frosty, not a soda...
@LupusGray: Hell's yeah we are, and that's why we're the greatest nation on Earth! You don't see those Khazaks walking around with parts of plastic forks in their lungs, no sirree!
Go Junior!
Didn't this guy feel any pain?
If I have something like that in my lung, I'd be in agony.
@Nicole: That's assuming his gulp theory is correct. I don't know about other people, but soft serve ice cream is very easy to swallow for me, so if something small was in it, I might not notice when I took a bite.
(this seems larger than I would think could go down without me noticing, but hey)
@LupusGray: My husband can drink faster than anyone else I've ever seen drink things.. and he's Australian. He had that trait before he moved to America. He also eats very very fast in huge bites and doesn't chew much.. lol.
Woohoo! I smell a frivolous lawsuit! If I were Wendy's, I'd start lining up my legal defense.
Manley said he's unsure if he will contact officials from Wendy's, based in Dublin, Ohio. Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch said he has never heard of a situation like this in his 29 years with the company. He said company officials would contact Manley at the appropriate time.
Hmmm..will he, or won't he?
The only plastic item I've ever swallowed in my life was a piece of a wendy's fork that broke off while eating a salad from them last month (crunched just like lettuce). I appear to be fine, I am sure it didn't end up in a lung like this guy.
@☠Grяrяrяrяrя, portrait of a chickenwolfmoosepig.: . . .and that sound you heard was me passing out cold.
@☠Grяrяrяrяrя, portrait of a chickenwolfmoosepig.: There can't be any way he could win. The branding on the foreign object lodged in your body does very little about how it got there. If it didn't say "Wendy's" on it, this would just be a story about a piece of plastic found in some dude's lung after being in there for two years.
Unless someone's a better armchair lawyer than I am, I can't imagine a way to build a case that it's negligence on the part of Wendy's.
@coren: He was swallowing the frosty into his lungs? That's the part I don't get. Yeah I could see eating it, but not breathing it.
The picture in this link suggests that the object was about three centimeters long and about one centimeter wide. Now how does something one centimeter wide fit up a straw?
So the guy is completely fine now? I think I saw this on an episode of House.
The doctors say he should make a full recovery -- I'm wondering if they mean "full" as in, "he can go back to work and take up jogging again," or full as in, "it's like it never happened." It seems like having a foreign object stuck in your lung for two years would trash the bejesus out of it.
@ImpossibleCheeseburgerPie: If you saw this on House shouldn't the guy have plague or something else esoteric and surprising at the 32 minute mark?
@zidan: There's a huge difference between a piece of plastic going through your digestive system and going into your lungs. All sorts of freaky things can safely pass (more or less) through the digestive system (just ask any parent or dog owner!). So I think you're fine, unless you downed the rest of the fork after the tine broke off.
does anyone else here think that the picture is just a filler? it has nothing to do with athe actual plastic removed from said lung?
@gottauser: OK, i didn't read the actual artical. now that i have, i have to say w t f? not only that but i live where this happened!
@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: Aussies eat steel wool when they feel the need for fiber.
That is all.
@☠Grяrяrяrяrя, portrait of a chickenwolfmoosepig.: I hope it was a lime tree. Since then his breath would always be wonderful.
@☠Grяrяrяrяrя, portrait of a chickenwolfmoosepig.: I'm pretty sure inhaling plasticware is something even Wendy's doesn't encourage as an intended use for their utensils.
Now, a terminal brain-freeze from their shakes, on the other hand...
@RandomHookup: Because people who bite too hard on their plastic utensil and swallow it may have health problems?
Oops, I think I just blamed the victim.
@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: Clearly he's doing it because he is a big and powerful Australian and not a fat, dumb, lazy American.
Does anyone else remember that story from awhile back where a guy complained of chest pain for years? Doctors thought he had cancer based on the symptoms, but when he went in for the biopsy, they found a SMALL TREE that had germinated in his lung. He'd inhaled a tiny seed a few years back.
I don't know which story is more bizarre -- that, or this. I could see how a small seed could be easily inhaled, but a hunk of plastic? On the other hand, plastic doesn't germinate.
I'm torn.
@LupusGray: Ooh, ooh! I know, let's play a game! Let's replace the word "American" with any other ethnicity and replace the stupid stereotype with a different stereotype (applicable to the chosen stereotype). Would you comment be more or less funny?
No, no, I'm really asking. Because, you know, I'm NOT offended as an American because I do actually inhale my food. (But I might do that had I been raised in Germany.) And I guess the Mexican families across the street, all crammed into one single-family home (economy) might not be offended if the joke was said about that stereotype. And maybe a black person in jail for larceny might not be offended about a joke about black people and thievery.
So let's try it and see how well it goes over.
You go first.
That looks like part of a handle of the Wendy's spoon to me.. maybe that's just how the picture is.. but I really think it does. Maybe he doesn't remember eating/breathing in the whole spoon with his frosty?