Mother In U.K. Accidentally Swallows COVID-19 Test Swab: ‘It Had Gone All The Way Into My Tummy’

A mother in the United Kingdom had to go through emergency surgery after she accidentally swallowed the swab for a COVID-19 test.

Getting tested for COVID-19 is already uncomfortable; imagine the swab getting stuck in your throat. That’s what happened to 31-year-old Bobby Lee, who says the incident could “have ended up fatal,” The New York Post reports.

It all happened a night when Lee felt sick after coming home from working a night shift. She decided to take an at-home test, but when she started to swab the back of her throat, the swab got stuck. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that people with at-home tests should only be swabbing the inside of their nose.

“When I swabbed the back of my throat, I sort of gagged,” said Lee, The New York Post reports. “The stick twanged in my mouth and got stuck at the back of my throat, with the swab down my throat and the end stuck in the roof of my mouth at the back.”

After many failed attempts to get the swab out, she got in her car and “drove straight to A&E.” Doctors told her they’d never seen any case like hers. “They’d never experienced the issue though, so they didn’t know what to do,” Lee said. “Every time I was swallowing, I couldn’t feel it at the back of my throat anymore, but you could still see it.”

Lee ended up having to get an emergency surgery procedure in which the doctor sent a camera down her throat to find and retrieve the swab.

“It had gone all the way into my tummy. The pictures they took with the camera down my throat even showed it near my intestines,” Lee said. “It had to come out of my mouth though, as if it had gotten into my intestines, it would have punctured them.”