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Russian man found with fir tree growing in lung (w/pic)


Harb67
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http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-04-13/Fir_tree_man_shocks_doctors.html

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A young man from the capital of Russia’s Udmurtian Republic was diagnosed with cancer, and had to undergo an operation which revealed the shocking truth – he had no cancer but… a tree growing in his lung.

It sounds like a story from Burger’s Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, when the eccentric Baron shot a cherry stone at a deer and it sprang into a cherry tree on the deer’s head.

For 28-year-old Artyom Sidorkin, though, it was no fun at all.

As Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper found out, he often had chest pains, and was coughing up blood.

An X-Ray showed a new growth in his lung, and doctors were certain it was a cancerous one.

Fortunately, when they dissected Artyom’s chest, it was decided to cut out a small piece first, and to carry out an express biopsy test. The doctor made an incision in the lung and saw… a fir tree.

“I thought it was a hallucination,” said Vladimir Kamashev, deputy head doctor of the Udmurtian oncology hospital that was carrying out the operation. “I said to my assistant – come here and take a look…it seems as if there was a fir tree there…!”

The assistant later confessed that at the first moment he thought that Kamashev went mad.

The sprout appeared to be 5 cm long. Doctors are shocked – they say Artyom could not breathe in or otherwise ingest the twig.

It means he somehow sniffed the seed – and it sprouted inside his body.

“To tell the truth, I didn’t feel I was carrying some foreign object inside me – and moreover that it was growing. But it was very painful,” Artyom said.

The piece of lung containing the fir tree was put into a special solution, as it is a unique exemplar.

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I just had to post this. I've read a lot of weird news on the internet in my time, but for some reason, this creeps me out more than anything in recent memory. This type of thing isn't supposed to happen...I'm not supposed to have to wonder "man, is this chest pain because I'm out of shape or because THERE'S A TREE IN THERE?!"

Seriously. Just look at that pic. Wtf :confused:

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Snopes doesn't have an answer but I'll go with...

"Not possible" for $1000' date=' Alex.[/quote']

I was skeptical at first, but it makes sense when ya ponder it. Seeds contain energy reserves so plants can sprout without sunlight, allowing them to grow tall enough to reach sunlight and begin photosynthesis. It's the reason you can put soybean seeds or whatever they are into a jar with wet paper towels and have them sprout roots. That thing obviously wouldn't have grown much more than that, but I don't see a reason why the sprout couldn't have happened.

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What about some sort of atmosphere??

If it could somehow get sunlight, I think a lung would be a pretty good environment for a plant, considering how plants produce oxygen and lungs produce carbon dioxide. However, photosynthesis obviously wasn't taking place, thus no carbon dioxide would be needed. I stand by my theory that it was just going off of the nutrient stores from the seed and that it wouldn't have survived much longer than it did given the lack of sunlight and soil. Not like a dead tree is much better than live one when we're talking about it growing inside of your body though.

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If it could somehow get sunlight, I think a lung would be a pretty good environment for a plant, considering how plants produce oxygen and lungs produce carbon dioxide. However, photosynthesis obviously wasn't taking place, thus no carbon dioxide would be needed. I stand by my theory that it was just going off of the nutrient stores from the seed and that it wouldn't have survived much longer than it did given the lack of sunlight and soil. Not like a dead tree is much better than live one when we're talking about it growing inside of your body though.

For them to have gotten to the stage of surgery though, I think this process wood have been going on longer than the seed/sapling could've endured from just it's own energy stores like you're proposing

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