Mr Sidorkin had complained of extreme pain in his chest and had been coughing up blood. Doctors were convinced he had cancer.
“We were 100 per cent sure,” said Vladimir Kamashev, a surgeon in Izhevsk in the Urals. “We did X-rays and found what looked exactly like a tumour.
“I had seen hundreds before, so we decided on surgery.”
Before removing part of the man’s lung, the surgeon investigated the tissue.
“I thought I was hallucinating,” said Mr Kamashev. “I asked my assistant to have a look: ‘Come and see this – we’ve got a fir tree here’. He nodded in shock. I blinked three times as I was sure I was seeing things.”
Medical staff said that Mr Sidorkin must have inhaled a seed, which later sprouted into a small fir tree inside his lung.
There’s video if you click the link and can stomach it.
I’m just sayin’…
