A nurse who works part-time at my hospital tells this story he swears is true. Maybe you’ve heard this before, but I can’t find a reference to it on Google, so I’m trying y’all…
A little boy somehow inhaled a bean up his nose and it got lodged in his sinus cavity and began to sprout. His elderly grandmother just kept snipping off the vine as it appeared out of his nose, until it got to the point where he began having excruciating headaches and had to be taken to the ER. An X-Ray showed that the inhaled bean had set up a root system within the boy’s sinus cavity and major surgery had to be done to remove it.
That’s the story as well as I remember him, telling it.
Being a respiratory therapist, I have seen cases where a child inhaled something organic and it had to be gotten out, but what puzzles me is the fact that the grandmother just kept snipping off the vine instead of taking the little one to a doc.
BTW, I checked my past posts to see if I had asked this before, because he told it right about the time I joined SDMB, but I couldn’t find a previous post, which surprises me a little because this was the place I was told to come to for debunking UL’s…
Sounds exceedingly unlikely to me. Plants need nutrients and light to survive and grow, and I’m not sure where you’d get either inside someone’s head!!
BTW, my mum used to tell me that if I ate cherry stones they’d grow in my belly - is this an exaggeration of that story?
Well, it sounds like nonsense to me, just because…well, because it sounds like nonsense is all!
However, to address Matiju’s response, all a seed needs to sprout is moisture (which is more than likely present in abundance inside the nose of your basic small child). Light wouldn’t be necessary for some time, and that the alleged vine began growing DOWN out of the child’s nose is consistent with how plants grow - their stems will reach toward the light, which in this case would be around his nostrils. I’ve grown bean sprouts - not in my sinuses, mind - but the method is to lay the seeds between moist paper towels and and keep them in darkness until they begin to grow. Sounds to me like the inside of a kid’s nose is just about the optimum environment for a bean to grow. And as re: the cherry seeds, well, it wouldn’t be in your tummy for long enough to sprout in the first place, and even if it was, stomach acid is not a conducive aid to seed germination.
Beans have quite a reserve of nutrients within them (that’s why they are the size they are) and the shoots will grow towards light, even if it’s really faint.
Not that I’m saying the story is true mind; Snopes has nothing on it.
My son put a dried black-eyed pea in his nostril. I was unaware that he did this. It didn’t quite turn into a full plant; but it did germinate inside his nose. He sneezed and the sprouted bean flew out. Imagine my surprise. Here’s a photo:
The bean split when it flew out; but you can see the sprout growing from it. We planted it in a pot, to let it keep growing and as a reminder.
I had given him the beans to play with in his play kitchen. The sprouted bean flew out of his nose two days later. He’s absolutely fine. No hospital visit necessary.
I have worked with nurses and I think they are the primary source of most urban legends. However…
In the mid-70s I was working at a newspaper and worked with a woman who had a son who was two or three, something like that. He started having really bad breath. She took him to a dentist, that didn’t fix it. She hated the idea that her son didn’t smell good, but the fact was–he didn’t smell good, even to his mother. The dentist suggested a complete physical at his pediatricians. That physicial revealed that he had put a bean up his nose. I don’t think it had sprouted, but it had to be taken out–this didn’t require surgery–and it turned out to be the source of the bad smell.
I worked with her all the time this unfolded–first bad smell, trip to dentist, the whole thing. I guess what they took out of his nose, with one of those squeeze thingies, was pretty gross.
But not sprouted. I don’t know why not.
Knowing human nature as I do, I find it shocking but not unbelievable that somebody would snip off growing vines and not take the kid to the doctor.
So a 75 year old man, can’t breathe well, coughing FOR MONTHS, he has emphysema and yet his doctors for months couldn’t find what’s wrong, till months later they finally get around to taking an xray? I’m not saying it’s not true, but if it is, sounds like a bunch of lousy doctors.
Seems like if an old guy is coughing, has emphysema, is getting worse and worse, it shouldn’t take months to take an xray