A 35-year-old man arrived at an emergency department in Mogadishu, Somalia, with repeated vomiting, abdominal pain, and a belly that kept swelling. The X-ray his doctors ordered showed a dense, sharply outlined metallic mass sitting in the upper left of his abdomen, right where the stomach sits. When they passed a camera down to look, they found the reason: 30 metal keys and two magnets, packed against a stomach lining that had begun to ulcerate.
Every object came out through his mouth. The report, published in the Journal of Surgical Case Reports, is unusual not only for the sheer number of swallowed objects but for how little was done to get them out.
