- ‘Oh yeah, I got horribly stabbed through the chest. Barely even noticed.'
There could be something medically wrong with you even if you never knew a thing. For instance, you could carry and spread the flu or COVID-19 virus without having a single symptom.
Or you could live for years with a knife in your chest cavity and never notice a thing.
That’s what a man from Tanzania did. He sought medical attention after his nipple became sore and quite obviously infected.
Trying to find to cause of the infection, the doctors took X-ray images of the man’s chest. Sure enough, they found the reason — there was an entire knife blade stuck between his ribs.
The man recalled he had been the victim of a knife attack several years ago. However, his wounds had been treated at the time, and he’d been living perfectly comfortably without any issues until now.
During an extensive operation, the doctors pulled the knife out of the man, alongside the dead tissue around it that had caused his infection. Following a couple of weeks’ recuperation period, the man was sent home without problems.
My Nipple is Oozing
The mind-boggling case of the man was detailed in a medical case study published in the Journal of Surgical Case Reports (DISCLAIMER: there are potentially disturbing medical photos in there). Our hero is a 44-year-old man from Tanzania.
His case began innocently enough with his right nipple. One day, he woke up to it being strangely tender and sore.
Over the next 10 days, things got worse. A hole opened up under his nipple and began leaking foul-smelling pus.
Well, that’s a serious infection if we ever heard of one. Our man thought so, too, and decided it was high time to see a doctor.
The doctors were concerned, but they couldn’t immediately see anything obviously wrong with the guy. His vital signs were perfectly normal, and he said he didn’t have any pain, fever, or difficulty breathing.
That said, the hospital staff noticed that as the man breathed, the right side of his chest didn’t expand as much as the left. Considering the infected nipple was on the right as well, they got suspicious and decided to give the man a chest X-ray.
We can only imagine the doctor’s reaction when they saw the pictures. Inside the man’s chest, lodged between his ribs and organs, was a several inches long knife blade.
Yeah, that’d cause an infection, alright.
Knife Fight
Naturally, the doctors were flabbergasted and asked the man if he had any idea why he was walking around with a knife inside his body. He was initially equally confused, but then it all started to make sense.
The man told the doctors that he had been a victim of a knife attack eight years ago. He’d received several cuts and stabs to his face, back, and chest.
He had received emergency care, and his wounds had been sutured. Considering his injuries had healed fine and the man hadn’t felt off in any way, nobody had seen need for further examinations.
These new X-rays, however, showed that one of his cuts had been deeper than anyone would’ve guessed. An attacked had stabbed the man right through the right scapula and the blade of the knife had dislodged inside his chest.
Miraculously, the blade had missed all organs, bones, and major veins. As the man’s wounds healed, his body swallowed the knife, and he lived as if it wasn’t there for all those years.
Of course, the knife didn’t belong in his body, and eventually the surrounding tissue began to die. This, in turn, caused an infection, which resulted in the man’s sore, pus-leaking nipple.
Successful Treatment
Well, now that the doctors knew the knife was inside his chest and finally causing problems, they had to do something about it. During a long and meticulous operation, they slowly pulled the knife out, being careful not to accidentally slice the man’s lungs open with it.
Luckily for our guy, the operation was a complete success. After 24 hours in emergency care observation, he was deemed infection-free, and stable enough to be moved to a regular hospital bed.
One an additional uneventful 10 days had passed, the man was discharged and he went home. His follow-up checks two and six weeks later showed that he was recovering well and enjoying his now knife-less life.
Shockingly Common Ailment
You’d imagine that not realizing there’s a huge foreign object inside your body would be hard to miss. However, it’s surprisingly common.
For instance, earlier this year, we brought you the story of a Vietnamese man whose eye had become infected. During examinations, doctors found that there was a three-inch-long piece of a chopstick stuck inside his brain.
A similar episode happened in 2023, when another Vietnamese gent developed debilitating headaches over several months. Once again, the cause was a chopstick in the brain.
And then there’s the Tunisian woman who had a drinking glass inside her bladder.
Really, can you be sure there’s not something inside your body that doesn’t belong there?