Doctor finds plant growing inside man's lung

BREWSTER, Mass. -- There was a problem sprouting in a local man's lung. Doctors originally thought the new growth was a tumor, but when they looked closer, they got a big surprise.


“I was told I had a pea seed in my lung that had split and had sprouted,” said Ron Sveden.

It was not the diagnosis Ron Sveden was expecting. He had prepared himself to hear the words cancer and tumor, but a plant growing in his lung?

“Probably about a half-an-inch, which is a pretty big thing of course,” said Sveden.

Ron had been sick for months. He was already fighting emphysema when his health took a turn for the worse.

“I was not doing too well, a lot of coughing, I was very listless,” said Sveden.

On Memorial Day Sveden’s wife called 911, and he was rushed to the hospital where doctors took x-rays and found his left lung collapsed.

For two weeks they ran tests but they all came back negative for cancer, until one doctor found the plant growing in his lung.

“Whether this would have gone full-term and I’d be working for the jolly green giant, I don’t know. I think the thing that finally dawned on me is that it wasn’t the cancer,” said Sveden.

Ron said he never felt anything growing in his chest, just a lot of coughing.

Doctors suspect he had eaten a pea at some point in the last couple of months and it went down the wrong way, and then began to grow.

“One of the first meals I had in the hospital after the surgery had peas for the vegetable. I laughed to myself and ate them,” said Sveden.

His wife Nancy was beyond happy with this strange twist of fate.

“God has such a sense of humor. It could have been just nothing, but it had to be a pea, and it had to be sprouting,” said Nancy Sveden, Ron’s wife.

Sveden continues to recover at home. In fact, friends and neighbors have had fun with this; they sent him pea seeds and canned peas all in good fun.