SEMINOLE HEIGHTS, Fla. – A Florida woman is breathing easier after discovering that a mass doctors discovered in her lung may be a fruit pit she inhaled nearly 30 years ago.
Blanca Riveron, who suffered from a nagging cough for 28 years, was set to undergo surgery after a scan at the doctor's office detected a dark mass on her lung that physicians feared might be cancer, WTSP-TV reported.
Riveron, 62, shared the bad news with her daughter, who suggested the mass might be the seed of a small fruit, called a nispero, that she inhaled nearly three decades earlier.
"I told my daughter, 'No, it can't be it. It's been 28 years -- I mean, it can't be it,'" Riveron, who had forgotten all about inhaling the seed, told WTSP-TV.
Yet Riveron soon coughed up the seed that had apparently been lodged in her lung since 1984. With the seed gone, Riveron no longer suffers from coughing fits, she told WTSP-TV.
Riveron said ridding her body of the seed has given her a new lease on life, but she is planning on having her lungs screened by a doctor next month.
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