We all love snacking on our favourite flavours of popcorn especially when binge-watching a Netflix series or when watching a movie at a theatre. Most of us have also regretted eating the snack as the kernel sometimes gets stuck to our gums, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else, until it is removed.
And what would a regular person do in such a scenario? Remove the popcorn using a toothpick or any sharp object, right? But what happened to this firefighter after he tried removing the popcorn stuck in his gum would definitely alarm you to not attempt anything like this ever!
41-year-old firefighter Adam Martin had a piece of popcorn stuck in his back tooth while watching a movie with his wife. The father of three struggled with the popcorn for three days until he decided to prick it using varied objects including a pen lid, a toothpick, a piece of wire and even a metal nail, reported Mail Online.
But, in the bid to ease him of the discomfort, he damaged his gums. A week later, he began to suffer from night sweats, fatigue and headaches, reported Fox News. Suspecting flu, he went to the doctors. The doctors diagnosed a mild heart murmur and sent him for blood tests and X-rays. He was sent home with normal medication.
“I had a feeling there was something seriously wrong. I was sleeping an awful lot and I felt terrible. I had aches and pains in my legs and I just did not feel right at all. I was admitted to hospital the same day for tests. By this point, I was very worried. I felt quite ill and I knew I was not right at all,” Adam said.
However, a few days later, he developed a blood blister on his toe. Worried about the blister, he went to the Royal Cornwall Hospital only to realise that it was a sign of infective endocarditis.
While he was being treated to fight the infection, chest scans done later revealed that his heart had been severely damaged and would need an urgent operation.
Adam had to undergo a seven-hour open-heart surgery to replace his heart’s aortic valve and repair the mitral valve, which had been allegedly damaged by the infection. Adam later learned his symptoms were signs of endocarditis or an infection of the endocardium. According to the source, the endocardium is the inner lining of the heart chambers and heart valves.
“My heart was not properly working anymore. It was essentially wrecked. The infection had eaten the valves away. I should have just gone to the dentist in the first place.”
“I don’t want anyone to go through what I have done. It all happened so quickly and it did get sketchy. I won’t be going near popcorn again, that’s for sure.”
“It’s crazy to think all this happened because of that. It was something so trivial,” quipped Adam.
Adam’s wife Helen (38) told sources that her husband’s infection could have easily been treated with antibiotics if it had been caught sooner. “Any sign of a toothache, bleeding gums, an abscess, get it checked out. Your gums are a bacterial highway to your heart,” she advised.
It took around a month for Martin to recover completely. Who would have thought that the most liked snack would cause a life-threatening infection? Well, I am going to be careful the next time I binge-snack on popcorn. Better safe than sorry, right?