One of the more shocking incidents in recent memory related to a near-fatal choking occurred in the western Greece city of Agrinio and revealed after a 38-year-old local man was rushed to an Athens hospital for emergency surgery to remove three…fishing hooks from between his pharynx and esophagus.
The man, described as an amateur fisherman, told hospital staff he unwittingly ate a piece of octopus, along with the unseen hooks, he himself had caught. He said he first took out his own hook but failed to observe other hooks absorbed into the flesh of the soft-bodied saltwater mollusc, subsequently realizing that something metal had wedged in his lower throat.
“I caught that octopus, but those aren’t my hooks, those hooks were caught previously. Another fisherman was catching fish and the octopus swallowed the fish and absorbed them… They had been imbedded into his carcass, but they (hooks) were so small. Along with bread and (the piece of) octopus together, I subsequently felt something behind my tongue,” he was quoted as saying on a breakfast-time TV current affairs program on Monday.
He added that he immediately stuck his finger into the back of his mouth to stop the attached hooks from slipping further down and – stoutheartedly – by pushing one of the hooks into his flesh.
Emergency surgery at the Athens-area Gennimatas Hospital took place on Sunday evening, after the local hospital and other nearby facilities declared that they couldn’t handle such an unprecednented incident.
