A 95-year-old Chinese war veteran has lately discovered that for almost eighty years he had been living with a bullet stuck in his neck!
Zhao fell from the balcony of his house in Shandong, China, and did not really have serious symptoms until he started feeling a little discomfort in his neck. Observing this, his son took him to the hospital to have a doctor take a look at it. When the doctors learned about the fall, they recommended an x-ray to rule out serious damages from the fall. Too much of their surprise, they found an old bullet in his neck!
Upon asking, the man told doctors that he had joined the Chinese army as a teenager and fought through two wars – against the Japanese invaders during World War 2 (1931-1945) and on the side of North Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953). He suffered several injuries during his time in the army, but he did not recall anything about taking a bullet to the neck.
“He was injured while carrying a wounded comrade across a river during one of the battles. There is shrapnel in other parts of his body as well,” the man’s son-in-law, Wang, said.
Zhao himself estimates that the bullet had been in his neck since 1944 when he was hit by a bullet while crossing a river. He claimed that the bullet went in through the left side of the nose, perforating his upper jaw and knocking out four of his teeth before becoming lodged in his neck.
After examining the X-rays, doctors told Zhao He and his family that the bullet was close to some major blood vessels and since it wasn’t causing problems, they suggested leaving it.
“I’ve been healthy all these years so there is no reason to change things now,” Zhao said.