A curious 12-year-old British boy who is “massively into science” underwent a six-hour life-saving surgery after swallowing 54 magnets as an “experiment.”
Rhiley Morrison of Manchester, England ate the small magnetic balls to see if they would stick to his stomach and to see how they looked when they, er, completed their journey, according to the Daily Mail.
He revealed the stunt to his mom, Paige Ward, four days later, after they failed to emerge, and was “just speechless” upon learning doctors had removed the 54 magnets — twice as many as pre-surgery X-rays revealed.
“The surgeon said that if Rhiley didn’t tell me that day he’d swallowed the magnets, he could have died,” his mother told the UK paper.