NEW YORK (NBC News Channel) -- If your mother ever warned you to slow down while eating because the food could go down the wrong pipe, do we have a story for you.
Ron Sveden feared the worst when months of coughing and troubled breathing left his doctors dumbfounded. But a shocking x-ray finally revealed what was causing his symptoms.
Sveden had a problem sprouting in his lungs. For months, the 75-year-old had been coughing. His health was taking a turn for the worse, but doctors couldn't find what was wrong.
"I was not doing too well," Sveden said. "A lot of coughing, I was very listless."
Already battling emphysema, Sveden prepared himself to face a tumor and lung cancer until he found out something very different was growing.
"I was told that I had a pea seed in my lung that had split and had sprouted," explained Sveden.
Sveden's magic bean had gone down the wrong way. Instead of swallowing it, the pea traveled down into his windpipe, lodged inside his lung, and had begun to take root. The seed grew to one-and-a-half-inches, which had a sprout-like appearance, eventually causing Sveden's lung to collapse.
"Whether this would've gone full term, and I'd be working for the Jolly Green Giant, I don't know," said Sveden.
Although Sveden's case is a rare one, doctors say the environment inside our lungs is very much like a greenhouse.
"The conditions are right for things to grow. It's like having your garden during the summer," explained Dr. Ron Crystal, Chief of Pulmonary Medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "If the right seed is there, and it has the right nutrients, it possibly could grow."
But should you be worried the next time you eat your vegetables? Doctors say just remember your mother's advice and chew your food.
"We should always be careful about what we eat. And how fast we eat it," added Dr. Crystal.
Now out of the hospital and back at home, Sveden and his wife Nancy feel extremely lucky.
"God has such a sense of humor," said Nancy. "I mean, it could've been just nothing. But it had to be a pea, and it had to be sprouting."
And although the plant growing inside his lung nearly killed him, Sveden hasn't stopped eating his vegetables.
"One of the first meals I had in the hospital after the surgery they had peas for the vegetable," said Sveden with a smile on his face. "I laughed to myself and ate them."
