Doctors in Ireland performed a strange operation, removing over 50 batteries from a woman's stomach.

The 66-year-old woman swallowed 55 AA and AAA batteries in an apparent act of deliberate self-harm.

She was treated at St. Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin after ingesting a large number of cylindrical batteries.

X-Rays were taken showing the batteries did not seem to be obstructing her gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Thankfully no batteries showed signs of structural damage.

Doctors decided to start treatment by seeing if the batteries would pass through the GI track on their own. After 1 week the woman was able to pass five AA batteries, but nothing more. In the following 3 weeks, more x-rays were done and they showed the remaining batteries were not progressing through her body and it was causing the woman abdominal pain.

.Doctors decided to perform a laparotomy. (A laparotomy is a surgical incision into the abdominal cavity.) Surgeons found that the weight of the batteries had pulled down the stomach to where it was stretched to the pubic bone. Surgeons cut a small hole in the stomach and removed 46 AA and AAA batteries from the organ.

Four additional batteries, stuck in the colon, were "milked" into the rectum and removed through the anus. (Milking: A procedure used to express the contents of a tube or duct to obtain a specimen or to test for tenderness.)

A final X-ray scan then confirmed that the woman's GI tract was officially battery-free.

Read more here: Irish Medical Journal

After hearing this story, we talked about the times we accidentally swallowed something that wasn't food. We posted the question on the Dyer & Michaels Facebook page, and here are the responses we received.