Was Chuckie crazy? I think not.
Does anyone remember that episode of Rugrats when Chuckie eats a watermelon seed and becomes afraid that a watermelon is going to grow inside of him? I don’t know about you, but for the next year or so after watching that I became extremely conscious about my fruit consumption. My dad would tell me that it was ridiculous and that something like that could never happen… well apparently 75 year old Ron Sveden has conquered the impossible.
On Memorial Day, Sveden was placed into the emergency room for having a hard time breathing. At the time he had Emphysema and had expected to develop lung cancer. When trying to diagnose him, they had a rough time figuring out the problem but after some x-rays their conclusion was a bit shocking. It had turned out Sveden had swallowed a pea that somehow lodged itself into his lung. Because of the Emphysema, it was impossible for him to cough out the pea so the seed had planted and actually sprouted inside of the lung. The sprouting caused a lot of the surrounding tissue to become swollen and infected so it was hard to find initially.
When seeds begin to sprout, they actually don’t need sunlight for the first 2-3 days, so the warmth and moisture of the lung contained all of the conditions necessary to produce a half-inch sprout. Luckily, after removing the sprout he turned out fine. The doctor pointed out that this phenonmenon can only happen with raw peas, beans or peanuts and it has happened in the past.
Crazy huh? I swear I didn’t make this up, check out the CNN article.
