Woman uses potato as contraceptive on advice of her mother, roots begin growing inside of her

(Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images) (2013 Getty Images)

Bizarre, unprecedented, unheard-of. That’s how the Colombian newspaper that broke the now viral story called this electrifying piece of news.

A 22-year-old woman from the outskirts of Honda, 90 miles west of Bogota, was found to have inserted a potato in her vagina to prevent pregnancies – and that the crop had started to grow roots.

Afflicted by sharp abdominal pain, and terrified by what seemed to be budding stems sticking out, Diana Martinez sought the medical help of a woman nurse. She was too ashamed, she said, to go to a hospital.

According to the story first reported by HSB Noticias, Martinez was just following her mother’s advice.

“My mom told me once that if I don’t want to get pregnant, I should insert a potato, and I believed her,” HSB quotes her as saying.

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Carolina Rojas, the nurse who helped the woman out of the squeeze, is a neighbor and acquaintance of the naïve patient, who lived for two weeks with the potato inside.
Rojas said she could tell something was wrong as soon as she saw her.

“Diana came to my house and I saw she was very pale and scared. She was embarrassed to tell me what was going on right there [in my house],” Rojas told HSB. “She took me outside and asked me to come with her to her house before her mom came back, [she said] that she needed to ask me something that only I could hear,” the nurse added.

Rojas walked over Martinez’s place and after examining her in her bedroom she said she almost walked out thinking it was all a joke. But soon enough she realized it wasn’t and got to work.

“I had to use sterilized material to go ahead and take out the tuber so that the girl wouldn’t have to go through the embarrassment of having to go to a medical center,” she said. “And much less [the embarrassment of] having to tell the strict mother, who still doesn’t know what happened.”

According to the paper, Martinez has since been checked up in a hospital to prevent further complications.