Man Takes Up Internal Farming

RockDoctor writes "'A Massachusetts man who was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung came home with an unusual diagnosis: a pea plant was growing in his lung.' Just that summary should tell you enough to work out most of the rest of the details, but it does raise a number of questions unaddressed by the article: How did the pea roots deal with the patient's immune system? What would have happened if the situation had continued un-treated? I bet the guy has a career awaiting him in PR for a pea-growing company."

Comments

Pine tree lung

[Jodka]

There is a similar case of a pine tree in a lung.

Re:Pine tree lung

[sonnejw0]

Actually, the pine tree in a lung ... that was (obviously) a fake: http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2009/04/russian-man-did-not-aspirate-fir-tree.html But if this pea actually did grow insidiously inside a man's lung, this is actually remarkable in any number of ways. The immune system surely could not handle a pea, it's simply too large. Plants of been around for a lot longer than mammals, and this just goes to show their evolutionary dominance. If you're an imaginative person, it brings to mind that M. Night Shyamalan movie about the plants intentionally releasing pollen that was toxic to humans. Twilight zone stuff.

A plant growing inside a human, able to cause pain and possibly death, much like a virus, brings to mind lots of philosophical questions.

Re:good thing it wasn't a watermelon seed

[TheJokeExplainer]

Seeds don't need light when they're just sprouting. That's why you can plant them buried under soil, then they start to sprout.

Think of it as them subsisting on their "egg yolk" (the twin "bean" parts) while they're still in the process of sprouting. As the plant use them up in sprouting and forming leaves, the "bean" parts shrivel up and then the plant starts to rely on its roots and leaves for food and water.

What the article describes most likely looks more like a bean sprout than a full-blown pea plant.

A4Q

[blair1q]

How did the pea roots deal with the patient's immune system?

They didn't have to. The immune system is largely inactive in and oblivious to the airspace of the lung. It would only be when the roots breached the walls and entered the blood that the immune system would get wise.

What would have happened if the situation had continued un-treated?

If it had continued to grow and tore a hole in the lung he could have got infection-like symptoms (fevers and aches as the body ramped up production of leukocytes).

If it had died it would become food for bacteria in the air, and it would have decayed in situ. That would have made a gooey mess.

It gave him what TFA called emphysema, or maybe they meant he really has a prior diagnosis for emphysema so he thought this was more of that and didn't do anything with it until it became acute.

He probably would also have contracted (or had and they weren't reporting) a bad case of pneumonia. The more stuff in your lungs that isn't lung, the easier that is.

BTW, BT, DT, and there's not much better in life than to get a result of "it's not cancer it's something weird" when your lungs hurt.

bet the guy has a career awaiting him in PR for a pea-growing company.

Or a lawsuit waiting for him from the trademark-trolling division of Archer-Daniels Midland, for using their logo in his x-rays without paying a royalty.

Lung....

Lunnnnnnggggg....

Lovely, woody word....lunnnnnggg...