Today, millions of people are returning to work after a week of holiday feasting. Some may have gained a few pounds. But very few will have swallowed buckshot, as did one patient, reported in today’s New York Times:
The patient, a 73-year-old Inuit woman at Norton Sound Regional Hospital in Nome, Alaska, had probably been swallowing the pellets inadvertently for decades, in the meat of ducks and geese shot by local hunters.
The image was no surprise to the doctors who interpreted her X-ray, William M. Cox and Gene R. Pesola, who were used to seeing buckshot – though not this much – in the appendix in Alaska natives.
The buckshot was probably not causing symptoms, the doctors say — the X-ray was shot as part of a screening barium enema.
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