Arthur Lampitt of Illinois crashed his 1963 Thunderbird into a truck 52 years go, which eventually led him to the operating table on Wednesday to finally have a 7-inch turn signal removed from his arm, Fox News reported.
Lampitt, 75, is recuperating at home after the 45-minute surgery. The wreck broke Lampitt's hip, so his arm injury went unnoticed by doctors.
But then he set off a metal detector at a court house about a decade ago. A thin object the size of a pencil was shown on an X-ray, but Lampitt said it didn't cause him any discomfort or hinder his ability to use his arm.
It took him until his mid-70s, while moving concrete bricks a few weeks ago, to feel pain in the arm for the first time.
"Everything was fine until it started to get bigger," Lampitt's wife Betty said. "The arm started bulging."
When Lampitt decided to have surgery to have the object removed, he wasn't sure what was in his arm, ABC News reported. He figured it might have been a tool left inside from the emergency room in 1963.
Lampitt said he isn't sure what he wants to do with the old lever, but he might make a key chain out of it.
