Doctors remove plastic fork man swallowed a decade ago

A doctor examining a man who was taken to hospital with stomach cramps made an unusual discovery – a nine-inch long fork lodged in his stomach.

The BBC reported Lee Gardner had forgotten he had swallowed the fork ten years earlier. Gardner recalled how he was playing around with a plastic fork in his mouth and gagged, accidentally swallowing it.

His doctor at the time told him it would pass naturally through his system.

But it obviously did not, and when he turned up to Barnsley Hospital, suffering with cramps and vomiting blood, the discovery was made. 

The Independent reported doctors found that the prongs had pressed on the stomach lining causing an ulcer, which resulted in the bleeding.

Consultant general surgeon Hanis Shiwani carried out a 45-minute operation to cut open Mr Gardner's stomach.

"I can't believe it. I have never had any problems with my stomach except once a couple of years ago I remember thinking I felt like something had lodged when I bent over awkwardly," Gardner told the BBC.

"But the advice at the time was that it would just pass through my system, and as that was so many years before I really didn't think it could be the fork."

The Sun newspaper reported that doctors were amazed he had survived for a decade with it in his stomach.

“While they were looking inside me with the camera the doctor said are you sure you have not swallowed anything?

“I said “no” then when he said he could see what appears to be the prongs of a fork I remembered accidentally swallowing one years ago. I couldn’t believe it."