After eating seafood, a 73-year-old woman in Ecuador developed lower belly pain and diarrhea. She assumed it was food poisoning and took over-the-counter pain relievers, which helped only partly. Over four days, the pain became unbearable and severe nausea and vomiting set in, so her family rushed her to the emergency room.
The real cause was hiding in a place most people don't know they have. A sharp fishbone she never realized she had swallowed had lodged in a Meckel's diverticulum, a small pouch on the small intestine left over from fetal development, and punctured its tip. Surgeons in Quito described the case Sept. 18 in the Journal of Surgical Case Reports.
