When a patient shows up at a hospital with severe abdominal pain and ultrasound reveals a mass in his stomach, it’s only logical to think first of a tumor, perhaps cancer.

And that’s just what surgeons at Amritsar Corporate Hospital in India at first assumed, according to a hospital news release. But then they put a camera down his stomach on Friday “and saw a very different kind of thing,” said Jatinder Malholtra, the chief surgeon.

So different was it — they had never seen such a sight — that they did a CT scan to confirm what they saw, as it simply defied belief. And they found not just one of these things but many of them. The things were knives, pocket knives, each about seven inches long. “In 20 years, I’ve never seen such a patient,” Malholtra said. “I was amazed.”

“We asked the patient whether he had consumed these knives in a few days or a few months,” said Malholtra. “He said he had taken 28 in number in the last two months.” The scan did indeed show 28 knives inside. A team of five surgeons opened him up. They found exactly 28 knives, just like the man said.

The surgeons carefully removed each of the 28. But “we were not satisfied,” Malholtra said. Perhaps the man, a 42-year-old police officer, had miscalculated. Perhaps his appetite for knives was greater than even he knew. After all, a man who eats knives is not normal, perhaps not of sound mind, never mind his body.

They did another scan in the operating theatre and sure enough, found another 12, bringing the total to 40. They too were extracted.

Why would a man swallow any knives, let alone 40? “This was the big question,” said Malholtra. “But the answer was very erratic.” The man simply said “’I have made my mind to take the knives. I don’t know why. Impulse.’ They were taken on impulse only.”

Did the man have a mental problem? That “seems to be,” said Malholtra. But otherwise “he’s very much a normal man”.

In fact, there is a condition called Pica, once described in the Journal of the American Board of Medicine, as “common, but commonly missed. Pica is the compulsive eating of non-nutritive substances and can have serious medical implications.” — By arrangement with The Washington Post

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2016