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A man suffering from a two-year stomach ache shocked doctors who discovered the patient had ingested enough household items to fill a Mr Price Home shelf.

The stomach-turning contents ranged from buttons to earphones, lockets, chains, nuts, bolts, and many ‘other objects’.

The ‘victim’, Kuldeep Singh, had reportedly gone to the hospital concerned over his terminal tummy troubles, as well as a high fever. Medics scanned the problem area, whereupon they made an alarming discovery – Singh had reportedly consumed roughly 60 items, including magnets and zips.

Doctors diagnosed the trinket taster with pica, a mental health condition where the sufferer ‘compulsively swallows items that aren’t food’. The affliction is most common among young children, pregnant women and people with psychiatric disorders, including especially autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disabilities or schizophrenia.

People with pica often feel embarrassed or ashamed about this condition. Because of this, people with this condition often don’t seek treatment or are afraid to open up about it to their healthcare provider.

According to reports, the patient’s relatives were unaware of the problem, although they must surely have thought someone had sticky fingers as the stuff around the house kept disappearing.

Unsurprisingly, eating indigestible objects can prove hazardous to one’s health, as was the case with Singh.

“Since he had eaten sharp objects, there were severe wounds in his stomach,” said Ajmer Singh Kalra, director of the Moga Medicity Hospital in Moga, Punjab, where the human hardware store was treated. Singh subsequently underwent a three-hour surgery that was presided over by two surgeons.

This echoes another weird story where a London woman spent over $ 3,800 (R71,000) to satisfy her craving for clay, which began when she became pregnant with her son in 2013.

She must have sported quite a pot belly.

[source:nypost]