Car Part Removed From Arm After 51 Years

A 75 years old Mr. Lampitt had a turn signal part from a 1963 Thunderbird car in his arm since his accident in 1963. And this car part is now removed surgically from his arm after 51 years of accident.

So Arthur Lampitt of Granite City, Illinois drove out in his 1963 Thunderbird back in 1963 to go to work. On his way to the office, he crashed head-on into a large truck and suffered a broken hip and crushed debris of the car along with cuts and bruises.

His wounds healed, his hip was fixed, his pain was gone and Lampitt moved on with his life. He married the very next year to Betty and they raised four sons together.

All seemed well in Lampitt household when about 10 to 15 years ago, Arthur set off a metal detector as he passed through it and after getting checked from the doctors; his X-ray revealed that Arthur was still carrying around a part of his 1963 Thunderbird with him.

The X-rays revealed a long rod (car part is the size of a pencil) lodged in his left arm. They couldn’t make sense of what it was at first. Since Arthur felt no pain, the doctors decided to leave it be and handle it when it caused any problem. 

Meanwhile Arthur developed a theory about what might be stuck in his arm. With the help of couple of photos that his friends had taken of the car’s debris, he figured that the turn signal on the left side was missing and that might be the car part that was lodged in his arm.

It was time to find out what it was when his arm started to bulge and caused him pain. The doctors decided it was time to rid him of the car part. So the doctors decided to remove the car part from his arm via a surgery after 51 years of accident.

Dr. Timothy Lang of the City Place Surgery Center in suburban St. Louis performed the procedure of taking out the rod from Arthur’s arm. He said that it was normal day occurrence to find some foreign object in the body but it rarely was a car part lodged inside such a mobile body part. The car part was then removed via surgery from Arthr’s arm after 51 years of the accident.

It was surprising that it hadn’t gotten out or caused him pain for so many years (51 years is a long time). The car part was removed and the rod that came out was corroded and luckily it didn’t cause any harmful infection in Arthur’s body or arm.

Arthur was given the momento to decide its faith. He is thinking about turning it into a key chain but nothing is decided as of yet. He is currently at home, with Betty at his side. We hope that  he is recovering fast from the surgery in which the car part had been removed from his arm after 51 years.