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A UK mother had to undergo emergency surgery after she swallowed a COVID-19 test throat swab. It ended up traveling down toward Bobbie Lee’s intestines and she feared for her life.
Lee:
“It was really scary . . . It could have ended up fatal.”
She decided to take an at-home COVID rapid test after she felt sick. When she tried to swab her throat – it got stuck!
“When I swabbed the back of my throat, I sort of gagged. The stick twanged in my mouth and got stuck at the back of my throat, with the swab down my throat and the end stuck in the roof of my mouth at the back.”
She tried several times to remove the stick – but it went further and further down her throat.
“It only went halfway down my throat, so you could see the end of it sticking out of my throat.”
She drove herself to the hospital and doctors were able to pull the Q-tip out!
“It had gone all the way into my tummy. The pictures they took with the camera down my throat even showed it near my intestines. It had to come out of my mouth though, as if it had gotten into my intestines, it would have punctured them.”