https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/doctor-couldnt-believe-it-woman-ends-ae-over-beansprout-stuck-throat
PHOTO: TikTok/wafflenessa
Beansprouts - a vegetable you either love or hate.
And despite landing herself in the accident and emergency (A&E) department of a hospital after a beansprout somehow wedged itself in her throat, it has not stopped this woman's liking of the vegetable.
The bizarre incident occurred in October 2023, content creator Vanessa Chia told AsiaOne on Monday (Jan 15). She declined to reveal the hospital she visited.
In a TikTok video on Jan 10, the 26-year-old recounted her ordeal that started when she felt something stuck in her throat after eating mala and rojak for lunch.
Chalking the feeling up to a consequence of the 'heaty' foods she had consumed earlier, the woman tried to "swallow down the feeling" by drinking water, but to no avail.
The feeling persisted till later that night, when Chia suddenly coughed and "felt something coming up from the back of my throat".
"I looked in the mirror and I saw something dangling out," she exclaimed.
The woman said she then tried pulling it out of her throat for around five minutes before calling her boyfriend for help.
"We even tried using tweezers, but every time he pulled, I could feel a resistance from the back of my throat," she explained.
Afraid that they might be tugging on a part of her throat instead, Chia told her boyfriend to stop and went to bed thinking that she could "sleep it off".
this was the video I showed all the doctors and they were all like???
When Chia woke up with the same feeling the next day, however, the couple decided to seek treatment at a polyclinic, where they were immediately referred to the A&E.
There, multiple tests such as an X-ray were performed on Chia, before they were able to see a doctor eight hours later.
According to her, the doctor decided to do an endoscopy, which is a procedure where a small camera fixated on a tube is passed into the nose or mouth to examine the throat and stomach.
It was then that the doctor confirmed that there was something stuck in Chia's throat and called for an assistant to repeat the procedure with a "bigger" tube containing a medical device to free the object.
"They went in and out my nose - both left and right sides - around five to six times, but they just couldn't get it out," recalled Chia. "That was around an hour of me sitting there and just tearing constantly."