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"If the pin neva ben' the story woulda nevah end...."- that's the standard closing line to so many classic Creole folktales – but our next story is about a pin that - had it bent – then the story would have had a very different ending. Confused...? When you see the pin we're talking about, you won't be. Jules Vasquez has more.

Jules Vasquez Reporting,
You see this pin? It's a standard push pin – except this one's a little rusty. Apart from that, there's nothing really remarkable about it. Except that just a few minutes earlier it was in this young man's lung. He is 17 year old BDF Private Delroy Miralda from Esperanza Village marvelled as he looked at it – because the last time he saw it, was yesterday when he put it in his mouth.

Delroy Miralda,
"Well I mi the work picking up some papers and my hands were too full so I had to the thumb tacks into my mouth and my friend hailed me and I looked back and I said what and then when I looked back it just slipped down my throat."

A strange and curious mishap but a legitimate medical emergency and Lieutenant Col. Ervin Gabourel, the BDF trained gastro-enterologist had to get it out as an emergency.

Lt. Col. Ervin Gabourel, Gastroenterologist
"Any foreign body in the lung is an emergency, you need to remove it within the first 24 to 48 hours. If you don't do that you will end up having the risk of that foreign body then becoming enveloped in the lung itself."

Cut to the operating room at Belize Healthcare Partners where Miralda is under anaesthesia and from there, Dr. Gabourel puts his bronchoscope down the patient's throat and goes in. This is what it looks like inside the respiratory tract from his tiny camera at the tip of the scope.

Gabourel manipulates the scope based on what he sees on the monitor and from the camera. Within seconds he's through the larynx and the trachea at the epiglottis while Miralda is still anesthetized. Deeper down, Gabourel parts the vocal chords to get inside the bronchus and there it is. That yellow dot, that's the push pin. Its point looks like a spear ready to pierce the wall of the lung. That object on the right of the frame is the specialized tool to clasp the tiny pin and pull it out, very gently.

Lt. Col. Ervin Gabourel,
"Luckily for us, the object was in such a position that we were able to capture the smaller portion of the push pin, the metal portion, and it is straight so we had to position the grasper and once we had secured that then it was just a matter of gingerly extracting it from the lungs so as to avoid any injuries or to dislodge the foreign object from the grasper."

Within one minute of finding it, Gabourel has the pin gripped and is pulling it out slowly slowly up the throat until it's here at the mouth and in the doctor's hand. The procedure lasted about 5 minutes and looked as easy as pie but there are risks.

Lt. Col. Ervin Gabourel,
"It depends on who does procedure. Obviously if you have somebody doing it for the first time it is a little more difficult, tedious. Some of the procedures would be puncturing the lung if you're not manipulating it properly."

Within a few minutes Miralda is up and relieved to have it out.

Delroy Miralda,
"I had a good sleep."

Jules Vasquez,
"You think you will want to hold on to that?"

Delroy Miralda,
"Yeah I will keep it as a souvenir or something."

Lt. Col. Ervin Gabourel,
"I see this mostly in young children between the ages of 2 to5, that's when they put a lot of stuff in their mouths. I've seen it in older kids, sixteen. This present patient is 17 years old and most of the time it is by an accident that it occurs in the older patients. In the younger patients it is basically curiosity.

Basically it is a routine job. Actually it is hard to explain but my brain tells the hands what to do and I don't even think about it. It just happens automatically."

In the past, before the advent of endoscopic procedures such as the one you just saw – doctors would have to perform open surgery on the lung to get the pin out – which would require puncturing the lung to collapse it – a situation fraught with complication risks and difficulty. As the BDF doctor, Gabourel performed the surgery for free as part of his duty but the BDF still has to pay Belize Heath Care Partners.