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Israeli woman swallows cockroach, fork

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Associated Press


July 10, 2003 |

JERUSALEM (AP) -- An Israeli woman swallowed a cockroach and then a fork she used to try to remove the insect from her throat.

The winged cockroach jumped into the 32-year-old woman's mouth as she was cleaning her home in a village in northern Israel this week.

"It's a bit of a strange story," said Dr. Nikola Adid, who operated on the woman Tuesday to remove the fork from her stomach. "This is the first time I've ever encountered anything like this. None of my medical colleagues in this country have heard of anything similar either."

An X-ray showed the fork, lodged sideways in her stomach.

Adid, a surgeon at the Poria Hospital in Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, removed the fork with laparoscopic surgery, a minimally invasive procedure performed through a tiny incision on the patient's abdomen.

The woman was recovering well, Adid said.


argh!