A man who was nearly killed in a 1963 car crash in his Thunderbird has kept souvenirs of the accident. However, he did not know he had been carrying one in his arm for the past five decades.

Inside the left forearm of 75-year-old Arthur Lampitt of Granite City, Illinois the surgeon removed a thin metal rod Wednesday which turned out to be the car's 7-inch turn-signal lever. The object was extracted in a 45-minute operation.  

Like Us on Facebook

In the head-on collison with a truck more than half a century ago, Lampitt suffered severe injuries and had numerous surgical operations, including a major one for a broken hip. He also had multiple cuts but was soon well on his way to a full recovery.

Decades later, Lampitt would set off a metal detector while entering a courthouse. A doctor's x-ray decades revealed a thin metal object but since it didn't hurt, Arthur was told to ignore the object inside his arm.  

"Everything was fine until it started to get bigger. The arm started bulging," his wife Betty told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. While doing some work moving concrete blocks, Lampitt felt a sharp pain.

After the operation, Lampitt said he was surprised on how corroded the metal rod was: "I started to wonder just where all that metal went."

"We see all kinds of foreign objects like nails or pellets, but usually not this large, usually not a turn signal from a 1963 T-Bird. Something this large often gets infected," said Dr. Timothy Lang of the City Place Surgery Center.

In a collection of photographs from the accident scene, Lampitt noticed a picture of the steering wheel of his Thunderbird -- with the turn signal lever missing.

TagsArthur Lampitt, turn-signal lever, Thunderbird, half a century