A woman was taken to hospital recently, complaining of pain after having just accidentally swallowed a straw - at least, that's the story she told doctors.
However, when the medical team went to work on the patient, named only as Ms Lu, what they discovered was definitely not a straw.
Instead, they had to remove a 12-inch plastic pipe from the 22-year-old's digestive tract. As for how the pipe had become lodged, well, that remains a mystery.
The woman took herself to the Third Affiliated Hospital of South Medical University in Guangzhou, south China, to be treated, where she told staff that she was drinking milk tea when the straw went down her throat.
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She was immediately taken for scans, which showed the lengthy plastic tube measuring 30 centimetres (12 inches) in length and 1.9 centimetres (0.75 inches) thick lodged in her oesophagus and stomach.
Gastroenterologist Zhang Ting said: "She came to the outpatient clinic on 3 December and said she had accidentally swallowed a straw when drinking milk tea.
"She wanted our help getting it out, but we discovered that it was far deeper than we had anticipated.
"A CT of her esophagus showed a large foreign body inside - about 1.9 inches think and 30 centimetres long. It was obviously not a straw."
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The following day, Ms Lu was taken for endoscopy, which involves the use of a long, thin, flexible tube that has a light source and camera at one end so the medical team could see what they're dealing with.
Doctor Yue Hui successfully removed the tube from her oesophagus and out through the patient's mouth.
Dr Hui explained that although Ms Lu suffered from stomach ulcers as a result of the pipe, luckily it hadn't punctured her organ and so she's expected to make a full recovery.
She's lucky it didn't turn out worse. As for why this happened, it remains a mystery.
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Ms Lu isn't the only one to swallow something they really shouldn't have. Earlier this year, an unnamed 25-year-old man from China swallowed a lighter.
The lighter's fuel had leaked into the man's stomach after he swallowed it - meaning he could have exploded under the wrong circumstances.
Dr Liu Xi, who was responsible for removing the partially eroded lighter, said: "If he had come across any flames, an explosion would have been highly likely, and that would have killed him."
Topics: World News, Weird, China, Health