Does She Have Lung Cancer, or Was it a Fruit Pit?

A Seminole Heights woman's lung cancer may have instead been a fruit pit that had been sitting in her lung since 1984.

Blanca Riveron, 62, had suffered from a nagging cough and labored breathing for 28 years, as WTSP 10 News reports. When she began coughing up blood five months ago, her doctors spotted images of a mass in her lung they suspected was cancer.

But after receiving the diagnosis, the station reports, Riveron's daughter remembered a story from 30 years ago when the woman accidentally swallowed the seed of a fruit called a nispero. Could that have been the cause of her breathing problems and the dark mass?

"I told my daughter no, it can't be it," Riveron told WTSP. "It's been 28 years — I mean it can't be it."

But a few weeks later, after a second endoscopy, a violent coughing spell brought up a seed, which Riveron said she thinks was sitting inside her all along.

Riveron has another check-up on her lungs scheduled in two weeks, WTSP reports, but she says she's already breathing much easier and thinks the pit was the cause.

Watch the station's full video report online.