Illinois Man Has Seven-Inch Mystery Object Removed After 51 Years

Arthur Lampitt, 75, has been walking around with a mystery object lodged in his left arm, and it has finally been removed after 51 years. While it was a mystery all that time, the object has now been identified as a seven-inch turn signal lever from his 1963 Thunderbird, which he had crashed head on into a truck all those years ago.

Lampitt suffered several severe injuries in the crash, including a broken hip and ribs along with many cuts. According to the family, the wreck was so bad, it was mistakenly reported as a fatality at the time. The hip injury particularly was so severe, it completely drew attention away from his arm, which appeared to merely be cut and flecked with broken glass. After healing, Lampitt had several scars, including one on his left arm, but didn’t think anything of it.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports around 10 years ago, Lampitt, who hails from Granite City, Illinois, set off a metal detector in a local courthouse. After an X-ray was made of the arm, it turned out there was a slender object, approximately the length of a pencil, lodged in the arm. As the object was not, apparently, causing any pain or discomfort, doctors recommended Lampitt leave it be.

However, a few weeks ago, Lampitt was moving some concrete blocks and his arm began to hurt for the first time in 51 years. The arm started swelling and Lampitt decided to go ahead and have surgery.

While Lampitt initially had no idea what to expect when the object was removed after 51 years, he did wonder if maybe a medical instrument had been accidentally left in there during a visit to an emergency room back in 1963.

He dug out a some old photos taken by a friend of his mangled Thunderbird when he had his accident so many years before.

Lampitt happened to notice that the car was missing a signal lever from the left-hand side of the steering column, and started wondering if that was what the mystery object was.

After a 45-minute operation at the City Place Surgery Center in Creve Coeur, Missouri, his theory was confirmed. The object in his arm, removed after 51 years was, indeed, a seven-inch turn signal level from the fated 1963 Thunderbird.

When Dr. Timothy Lang told Lampitt’s wife, Betty, that the turn signal lever was seven inches long, Betty replied, “Oh my God.”

According to Lang, a protective pocket had grown around the lever, which is why Lampitt felt no pain for so long.

“We see all kinds of foreign objects like nails or pellets, but usually not this large, usually not a turn signal from a 1963 T-Bird,” Lang said. “Something this large often gets infected.”

According to Fox News, Lampitt is now trying to decide what to do with the turn signal lever. Now it has been removed after 51 years, he is considering making a key chain out of it.

In other odd news on Inquisitr, a woman in Battle Creek, Michigan, recently woke up to find an unknown baby in her bed. Authorities are trying to find out who that baby actually belongs to.

[Images: Betty and Arthur Lampitt – Jesse Bogan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 1963 Ford Thunderbird Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Sicnag]