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Pen in Woman's Stomach for 25 Years Removed, Still Writes

A pen that was stuck in an elderly lady’s stomach for 25 years has been successfully removed and amazingly the pen was still able to write.

The 76-year-old woman, who has not been identified, had her story published in the British Medical Journal Case Reports. She was seeing a gastrointestinal specialist for stomach related pains as well as concerns including weight loss and diarrhea.

The doctor diagnosed the woman with severe diverticulosis, but it wasn’t until after her diagnosis that her doctor noticed “a linear foreign body” in an X-ray of her stomach.

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When the doctor asked the patient if she remembered anything that could have led to this odd object to end up in her stomach the woman remembered she had swallowed the felt tip pen in the 1980s.

She told the doctor that she was using the pen in order to check her tonsils, examining them with a handheld mirror as she stood on stairs, a report from Gastroenterologist Dr. Oliver Walters explained.

While doing this, she lost her balance and tumbled down a couple of steps, swallowing the pen as she went down. At the time, X-rays did not show any evidence of the object in her stomach.

The woman’s claim was dismissed by her doctor and husband because X-rays at the time did not show any abnormalities.

The doctors explained the lost pen was not to blame for the woman’s digestive problems, but doctors decided to remove it anyway. They were citing a case of a child who also accidentally swallowed a pen, which then tore through his bowel.

Remarkably, the pen had caused no damage to the woman’s gastrointestinal tract; it even still had ink and could write after it was removed.

“This highlights that plain abdominal X-rays may not identify ingested plastic objects and occasionally it may be worth believing the patient’s account however unlikely it may be,” the report concluded.

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