You Just Never Know

Tonight we went to the hospital to visit a couple of people we knew who have had surgery.

My husband's brother-in-law had back surgery where they took a piece of hip bone, smashed it up and used it to reconstruct a couple of his vertebrate. Modern medical science amazes me!

Second, we went to visit a man who works for my husband. His 16-year-old son had surgery today to remove a lower portion of one of his lungs. He's been having health problems for quite some time and the doctors couldn't find any cause. He's had pneumonia 4 TIMES in the last 18 months. They were treating him for asthma, even though they knew that wasn't the real problem.

Anyway, the 45 minute surgery ends up being 4 hours. The parents are pretty frazzled by the time the doctors come out and explain the situation to them: they had removed the lower portion of the lung as planned (it was abscessed) and was cleaning the area up when a resident surgeon says, "What's that?" They pull the object out of the lung and IT WAS A PART OF A LEAF! The doctors think he inhaled it years ago and his current severe medical problems have all been due to the fact that his body has been rejecting this foreign object!

To me, this is totally unbelievable! However, his parents (and he) are so relieved to finally know the "cause." Also, the prognosis is that after his recovery from the surgery, he should be fine.

BUT........A LEAF HE INHALED YEARS AGO????

It seems this is not a one-time-deal. Check out this story.