Bed springs, razor blades, a toothbrush and a 10lb hairball…the Top 10 weirdest things found in people’s stomachs
Even reading about some of them is enough to make you feel ill, so just imagine how the diners felt!
1) Coins
Pica is a compulsion to eat things other than food – like the 62-year-old Frenchman who ate 350 coins in his stomach in 2002.
He’d been taken to hospital suffering from abdominal pains. The 5.5kg mass they found inside weighed as much as a bowling ball.
2) Diamond ring
Hard-up romantic Simon Hooper went in to a Dorchester jewellers to buy a ring to propose to his girlfriend with – but when he realised he couldn’t afford it he swallowed it.
He later denied it when cops X-rayed him, claiming it was a piece of foil.
Jeweller Fred Burgess later got the ring back but said it was proving hard to sell because people knew “where it had been.”
3) Hair
In 2007, docs were amazed to yank a 10lb hairball out of an 18-year-old woman’s stomach after she went to see her GP about stomach ache and a worrying 40lb weight loss.
Turned out she had been eating her own hair. A year later she had ditched the vile habit and had was back in good health.
4) Magnetic toys
A toddler was admitted to hospital with three pieces of his older sibling’s magnetic building set inside him.
When shown the offending articles, the boy said: “Candy.”
5) Fork
A 32-year-old Israeli woman swallowed a cockroach while cleaning her house, then tried to fish it out with a fork but gulped that too.
The doc who successfully carried out the operation to remove the cutlery, said after: “This is the first time I’ve ever encountered anything like this. None of my medical colleagues in this country have heard of anything similar either.”
6) Nails
In Thailand, 2006, a woman had 199 nails – many of them rusty and three inches long – removed from her belly after a bout of severe cramps.
7) Bed Springs
SUICIDAL prisoners are unpredictable characters. Jailbird Carl E Rhoades, 32, of the Kansas State prison was no different.
Docs opened him up and removed over 100 objects, including bed springs and even razor blades which he had eaten.
He didn’t want them removed but docs went to court to get permission to perform the operation.
8) Bullet
A Californian woman bit into a hot dog and swallowed a 9mm bullet.
Unlucky Olivia Chanes, 31, was tucking into the fast food at a food court when she noticed something hard.
X-rays revealed she had already swallowed another one.
After surgery to remove it, she said: “At first I thought it was part of my braces.”
9) Chain
An Indian man was admitted to hospital in 2007 with 236 metal objects - including a chain – inside him.
10) Toothbrush
Shocked student Georgie Smith, above top, feared for her life after accidentally swallowing her TOOTHBRUSH.
The 19-year-old let it slip while cleaning her tongue, and could not cough it back up as she has no gag reflex.
She was rushed to hospital where docs told her nature would take care of things.
