NAGPUR: A nice laugh with family is always considered a good medicine but sometimes it may turn into a life and death situation. A young woman from Indore was chewing clove when she laughed loudly and the clove accidentally entered her windpipe. What followed was some general coughing, some water and throat-clearing exercise and everything was normal.
Never in her wildest dreams did the woman imagine that the clove will pose the biggest nightmare to her seven years after this incident. After almost two to three years of the incident, the woman started facing problems like frequent coughing, difficulty in breathing and chest pain. Gradually, she started experiencing weight loss, and occasional sputum bleeding. The doctors conducted CT scan and found a lump and pneumonia developed in the lower left side of her left lung.
Considering all the factors, the doctors told that it could be cancer. For the 36-year-old woman, it was a shock of her life. The biopsy was done and resulted in negative for cancerous cells. But as all symptoms were of cancer, doctors referred her to Nagpur.
Pulmonologists in Krims Hospital conducted complete investigations and diagnosed that there must be something stuck inside the lung. A minimally invasive surgery that was conducted in three-four steps finally removed a clove from her lung. The woman got discharge recently and is living a completely normal life.
“When any foreign body enters our body, the body cells create pus around it. Gradually, the pus solidifies and body keeps on adding layers of such solidified pus around the foreign body. It took us three days to remove these layers, and the clove that was engulfed and calcified inside them,” said Dr Parimal Deshpande, who was in the team of doctors led by veteran pulmonologist Dr Ashok Arbat.
“It’s a rare case. It’s not unusual for us to remove cloves or any foreign body entered in wind pipe. But it generally happens immediately after incident. In this case, the clove went down from wind pipe and reached lungs, and it took seven years to get it out which is very rare,” said Dr Arbat.
The doctors conducted a minimally invasive surgery for foreign body removal. They inserted a tube with balloon and bronchoscope from her wind pipe and removed the parts of the lump step by step. It took three days to reach to the clove. Had it not been diagnosed, this part of the lung would have had to be amputated. Doctors said, the patient was lucky that all particles could be removed without any external cut. It would have been life threatening if this surgery would have failed.
Laugh life and second life
7 years ago, Anusha was chewing a clove when she laughed very loudly and had dry cough
From last 3-4 years, she started experiencing frequent coughing, shortness of breath etc.
She experienced weight loss, chest pain, and occasional sputum bleeding
Doctors in her hometown conducted CT Scan that showed a lump in left lung
Doctors in Nagpur conducted dilation ad enlarged the airway, finally step by step removed the foreign body
Even after 7 years, the clove was almost intact condition, because of human body’s protective properties
