Man coughs up nail after 35 years

Guy “Bud” Hart, 84, of Placerville, California, coughed up an inch-long nail earlier this month. It had been in his body since 1970. He had been mowing grass when the nail pierced his body. Doctors found it inside his ribcage, gave Hart penicillin, and decided to leave the nail where it lay. From News10:

Assetpool Images 062160340 Nail-185Three weeks ago, an internal camera captured an image of the nail during a routine doctor’s office visit. But it wasn’t in Hart’s ribcage area as he’d always thought — the object was actually in Hart’s lung. As Hart and his doctors made plans to remove the nail once and for all, natural physiology took over.

Hart was in the bathroom, brushing his teeth last week when the 35-year partnership finally came to an end.

“I’d been having this tickle in my throat,” Hart said. “Pretty soon, I started coughing. And it plopped right out….”

Hart keeps the nail in a small plastic bag but doesn’t have any long-term plans about what to do with the strange artifact.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 17th, 2006 at 11:38 am and is filed under journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.