Pea plant found growing in man's lung

BREWSTER, Mass. (CNN/WHDH) - It was not the diagnosis Ron Sveden was expecting. He had prepared himself to hear the words "cancer" and "tumor." Instead, doctors told him he had a pea plant growing inside him.

"I was told I had a pea seed in my lung that had split and had sprouted," Sveden explained. "Probably about a half-an-inch, and, uh, which is a pretty big thing."

Sveden had been sick for months. He was already fighting emphysema, and when his health took a turn for the worse on Memorial Day, his wife called 911. He was rushed to the hospital where doctors took X-rays and found his left lung had collapsed.

For two weeks they ran lots of tests but they all came back negative for cancer. Then, one doctor found the plant growing in his lung.

"Whether this would have gone full-term and I'd be working for the Jolly Green Giant, I don't know. But, I think the thing that finally dawned on me is that it wasn't the cancer," said Sveden.

He said he never felt anything growing in his chest. Doctors suspect he had eaten a pea at some point in the past couple of months and it went down the wrong way, and then began to grow.

Through it all, Sveden hasn't lost his sense of humor. "One of the first meals I had in the hospital after the surgery had peas for the vegetable," he said. "I laughed to myself and ate them."

"God has such a sense of humor. I mean it could have been just nothing, but it had to be a pea, and it had to be sprouting," Ron's wife Nancy said.

Ron Sveden continues to recover at home. His friends and neighbors have had fun with this as well, sending him pea seeds and canned peas all in good fun.