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A woman went to the ER thinking she had a bone stuck in her throat. It was a nail piercing her artery.

A Peruvian woman was eating pork rinds when she suddenly felt an object stuck in her throat. After vomiting blood, she went to the emergency room thinking she had swallowed a bone – but it was something far more dangerous.

Celia Tello, 68, had to undergo surgery to remove the object, which doctors told Reuters turned out to be a nail that was piercing one of her carotid arteries, blood vessels that the Cleveland Clinic says are “a vital part of your circulatory system.” There is a carotid artery on each side of your neck, each splitting into two branches to help supply blood to your head and neck.

“It never crossed my mind I had this nail or piece of wire,” Tello told Reuters in Spanish.

An x-ray image shows the nail accidentally swallowed by a 68-year-old woman who was eating pork rinds in February.

EsSalud via Reuters

Surgeon Diego Cuipal told Reuters that doctors had to conduct a “careful dissection” to remove the nail and that there was a risk of “detaching a clot that could reach the brain.” X-ray images showed the long nail lodged in her throat.

“We were able to isolate the affected artery and we repaired it by sectioning it and we joined a healthy artery with another healthy artery,” Cuipal said in Spanish.

The incident occurred last month, and Tello has since healed. Now, all that remains is a large scar on her neck from the procedure.

This is not the first time random and dangerous objects have turned up in someone’s food. Last year, stainless steel was found in peanut butter and bone fragments were found in smoked sausage, leading to massive food recalls. The FDA has cautioned that some food contamination is expected, saying that it’s “economically impractical” to avoid some “non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”

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Peru dog inspires Facebook community

Mar. 25—”Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.”

For those not familiar with the poem, the rest of the words paint a picture of a peaceful place where pets that have passed are restored to health and watch over their owners on earth.

And if Rainbow Bridge had a spokesman, or rather a spokesdog, it’d likely be Max.

Peru resident Joe DeRozier remembers the first time he ever met Max, the floppy-eared Maltese with a big-dog attitude.

“My wife (Kathy) and I got married 13 years ago, and I had just lost my last dog a few years before that,” he said. “And she had a dog (Max) because she wanted a dog in the house. … So when I met Kathy, and it ended up being serious, it was a package deal. I got the dog too.”

It didn’t take long for Max to endear himself to DeRozier either, or for DeRozier to do the same with Max.

“I was his play buddy,” DeRozier said. “I was the one that was going to play with him and get him to do stuff. And of course, I was attached to him just like that, I mean, how could you not be?”

And that bond grew even deeper after Max’s accident in late 2022, DeRozier explained.

“We have a pond by our house,” he said. “Max always went out the back door and down the steps and over to use the bathroom while I’d be getting his meal ready. Then he’d just run back up the stairs and into the house again. But on that day when I looked back after fixing his meal, he wasn’t inside.”

He wasn’t on the outside steps either.

“So then I went to the porch, and I saw him running along the water,” DeRozier said. “He didn’t see well enough to be running along the water like that. So I went back inside to grab my shoes. And now when I think about it, I should have just taken off running. But I grabbed my shoes. And when I went back outside, he was gone.”

DeRozier then took off running toward the pond’s edge.

A few moments later, DeRozier spotted Max below the surface of the water.

It took awhile to pull Max out of the pond that day, and DeRozier said many vets told him it would be best to put Max down after that incident because he was likely “brain dead.”

But the dog pulled through, DeRozier said smiling.

And within two weeks, he was the same old Max.

It was also around that time DeRozier, who has written eight books, decided to create a Facebook group detailing Max’s recovery and his everyday life.

He titled the page, “Max-Man,” and it quickly garnered attention online.

But what made the page extra unique was everything told was from Max’s perspective.

Visitors to the page were able to hear Max talk about his interactions with his family and friends, and they were even able to wish the dog a happy 16{sup}th{/sup} birthday.

But then came November 2023.

“Hi everyone,” a post read on Nov. 28. “It’s me, your puppy Max. Thank you so much for all of the love you’ve given me. I love you too. I have to go now. I’m sorry. Don’t forget me, OK? I won’t ever forget you. Love always, your puppy Max.”

“Max had just gotten so bad,” DeRozier told the Tribune, remembering those days of confusion and fear last November. “He had pancreatitis. He had liver issues. He had dementia. He was on three different medications all the time because when he was recovering from the drowning, he started to suffer from canine cognitive disfunction (CCD). He also had been having strokes.

“And Max was such a mess,” DeRozier added. “He hadn’t slept for two days, and I hadn’t slept for two days because I was up with him.”

So DeRozier and his wife made the painful decision to have Max euthanized.

And that’s when DeRozier said Max’s ultimate mission began.

“After he died, I wrote a post from Max’s point of view obviously,” he said. “I told everyone how much I (writing as Max) loved them and would miss them. And then people responded. But they didn’t say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Joe.’ They were saying, ‘Oh, Max, we love you and will miss you so much.'”

So after about a week, DeRozier said he had an idea.

“I just went ahead and made Max the spokesperson for Rainbow Bridge,” he said, smiling through his tears. “And people love it. So he’s at the bridge now, and he’s happy. He’s making new friends. Because that’s the thing. There’s a lot of people on there whose pets have passed, and everybody always wants to know that their pet is OK.”

DeRozier said the posts have become his therapy, but he also hopes they are also therapy for those who read them.

Because visitors to the site aren’t just reading Max’s adventures.

It’s become a completely interactive experience for the 1,300 followers to the group.

“People write on there and ask Max to find their own pets up there at the Rainbow Bridge,” DeRozier said. “And they aren’t talking to me. They’re talking directly to Max. They want Max to be the messenger.”

So he is.

And in DeRozier’s weekly posts, Max and those other animals enjoy big meals together, movie dates and playing endless games of fetch.

But their favorite activity, DeRozier believes, are the visits.

“Max writes that every night before they fall asleep, they all talk about their mommies and daddies and how they each had the best ones,” he said. “And then as a pack, they all come down and visit their mommies and daddies and let them know they’re all right.”

“Yes, I know people know it’s not real, but they still need it because it makes them feel better,” DeRozier added. “It makes them feel like it’s OK to be sad. It’s OK to grieve. It’s OK to miss them. We’re all going through something together. There are people that write to Max and say they lost their pets 10 years ago, and they still think about them all the time. Then they want Max to go find them and tell them that.”

And perhaps that’s the true success behind the “Max-Man” page, DeRozier confessed.

People just want to know that their beloved pet will never be forgotten.

“In my mind, Max was given a job by God to do this,” DeRozier said. “That’s how I think. That’s how I have to think. If I were to think about it another way, I’d have to say that he was gone. And this way, he’s not really gone. He’s still here, and he’s doing great things. Whoever created the Rainbow Bridge did (that) so we can all feel better. And this is just a continuation of that. This is just giving us messages from there.”

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The heaviest animal ever? Ancient whale found in Peru desert

Dating of volcanic ash at the site means the team could date the species to between 39.8 and 37.84 million years ago, in the Eocene epoch.

At that point other members of the cetacean family — which includes dolphins and whales — were still “abandoning the terrestrial lifestyle in favor of a marine one,” said Elisa Malinverno, a member of the research team.

The Perucetus colossus may have used its heavy skeleton as a ballast to roam around the ocean floor, feeding along the seabed like modern-day sea cows and some sharks, the study said.

“It’s just exciting to see such a giant animal that’s so different from anything we know,” said Hans Thewissen, a paleontologist at Northeast Ohio Medical University who had no role in the research, according to the Associated Press.

The Ica desert, one of the driest places on Earth, is also where scientists found the oldest known four-legged cetacean to reach the Pacific Ocean and the earliest ancestor of the modern baleen whales.

Patrick Smith

Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter for NBC News Digital.

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Newly discovered whale that lived almost 40 million years ago could be “heaviest animal ever,” experts say

There could be a new contender for heaviest animal to ever live. While today’s blue whale has long held the title, scientists have dug up fossils from an ancient giant that could tip the scales.

Researchers described the species — named Perucetus colossus, or “the colossal whale from Peru” — in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Each vertebra weighs over 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and its ribs measure nearly 5 feet (1.4 meters) long.

Peru Giant Ancient Whale — Paleontologist Mario Urbina poses for a photo next to the vertebrae of a newly found species named Perucetus colossus, or “the colossal whale from Peru”, during a presentation in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023.

Martin Mejia / AP

The bones were discovered more than a decade ago by Mario Urbina from the University of San Marcos’ Natural History Museum in Lima. An international team spent years digging them out from the side of a steep, rocky slope in the Ica desert, a region in Peru that was once underwater and is known for its rich marine fossils. The results: 13 vertebrae from the whale’s backbone, four ribs and a hip bone.

The massive fossils, which are 39 million years old, “are unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said study author Alberto Collareta, a paleontologist at Italy’s University of Pisa.

After the excavations, the researchers used 3D scanners to study the surface of the bones and drilled into them to peek inside. They used the huge — but incomplete — skeleton to estimate the whale’s size and weight, using modern marine mammals for comparison, said study author Eli Amson, a paleontologist at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany.

Giant Ancient Whale — In this June 2017, photo provided by Department of Earth Sciences, University of Pisa, disarticulated vertebrae of the skeleton of Perucetus colossus is excavated by Eusebio Diaz, from left, Alfredo Martinez and Walter Aguirre, in the Ica Province, southern Peru.

Giovanni Bianucci / AP

They calculated that the ancient giant weighed somewhere between 94 and 375 tons (85 and 340 metric tons). The biggest blue whales found have been within that range — at around 200 tons (180 metric tons).

Its body stretched to around 66 feet (20 meters) long. Blue whales can be longer — with some growing to more than 100 feet (30 meters) in length.

This means the newly discovered whale was “possibly the heaviest animal ever,” Collareta said, but “it was most likely not the longest animal ever.”

It weighs more in part because its bones are much denser and heavier than a blue whale’s, Amson explained.

Those super-dense bones suggest that the whale may have spent its time in shallow, coastal waters, the authors said. Other coastal dwellers, like manatees, have heavy bones to help them stay close to the seafloor.

Without the skull, it’s hard to know what the whale was eating to sustain such a huge body, Amson said.

It’s possible that P. colossus was scavenging for food along the seafloor, researchers said, or eating up tons of krill and other tiny sea creatures in the water.

But “I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing actually fed in a totally different way that we would never imagine,” Thewissen added.

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