There are conflicting reports over why a 30-year-old Colombian woman named Sandra Milena Almeida swallowed US$7000 this week. One thing, however, is clear: She did so to prevent her husband from getting his hands on the money. Doctors managed to remove most of the money from Almeida’s stomach and intestines, washing and drying US$7000 right in the surgery theater! Read on below.
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#1
A Colombian woman reportedly swallowed at least $US7,000 in a desperate act to hide the money during a fight with her husband, according to doctors in the South American nation who extracted the bills through surgery.
#2 Surgeons extracted 57 $100 bills from a 30-year-old Colombian woman who swallowed $7,000 in cash
According to the surgeons who removed the money from Almeida's gut after she turned up at the hospital complaining of abdominal pains, she ate the money in a "fit or rage" over her husband's infidelity.
The money was then removed from her stomach by doctors, who found a total of $7000 in rolls of $100. The couple had been saving the money but after learning what her husband had done, the woman decided to hide the money and use it to leave him.
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#3 She did not tell doctors about the money, but x-rays showed dozens of 3cm-long objects in her stomach and intestine.
The woman ate the money when a dispute between the two began. The man asked for half of the money they had saved but the woman decided to eat the $7000. She was taken to a hospital a day after swallowing the rolls of $100 because she began having abdominal pains.
Doctors removed all of the money she had swallowed during the dispute but only $5700 of the $7000 could be saved. The doctors cleaned and dried the money after the operation. Doctors originally thought the woman was hiding something else in her stomach.
#4
Juan Pablo Serrano, chief surgeon at the hospital, said his first they thought was that Ms Almeida was a drugs mule as the objects in the X-ray images were similar to bags of narcotics.
He told Colombia's Radio Caracol: 'We took the patient into surgery for two procedures to clear the blockage, on her stomach and intestine.
'The dollar notes were washed and are in good condition, but the rest of the money was lost because of the gastric fluids.'
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#5 Swallowing money is dangerous, say experts. Whether notes or coins, there is no guarantee that it will all pass through the colon.
According to a study done by New York University, 3 out of 4 bills are contaminated with a range of common microbes like vaginal bacteria and fecal matter. More than 3000 different strains of bacteria was discovered on the bills that were examined.