By Eric Glasser
Seminole Heights, FL (WTSP/CNN) - A growing problem in a Florida woman's lungs leads to a suspected cancer diagnosis.
For 28 years Blanca Riveron suffered from a debilitating, nagging cough. Her breathing was labored. Doctors treated her countless times for asthma and pneumonia.
"It's been horrible. My life had just been horrible," said Riveron.
In December, Blanca coughed up blood. Frightened, her daughter, Dayana, brought the 62-year-old to doctors again, and this time they found a mass in her lung. A dark spot they suspected was cancer.
They told her they needed to do surgery.
In tears, Blanca called another daughter, Melody, who still lives in Cuba. She told her about the sad diagnosis. But then Melody reminded her mother of a story from three decades ago. When Blanca was eating a piece of fruit called nispero.
Blanca had all but forgotten the story of the time she yelled to her children and accidentally inhaled a nispero seed.
"I told my daughter no, it can't be it. It's been 28 years. I mean it can't be it," she said.
Ridiculous, thought Blanca, that a pit could be the culprit after three decades, but a few weeks later, after a second endoscopy, Blanca was sitting at a traffic light, started coughing violently, and out it came; the seed that had sat in her lung since 1984.
"She's even been able to blow up a balloon for my son she had never been able to do that," said her daughter Dayana Noda.
In two weeks, Blanca will go back to the doctor to check her lungs again, but she's already breathing easier. She believes in her heart it was the seed all along, not cancer.
"I can breathe, I can sleep. My life has changed completely," said Blanca.
WTSP/CNN