A 75-year-old Illinois man lived with a 7-inch turn signal lever embedded in his left arm for 51 years, and on Dec. 31, 2014, the lever was finally removed, The Associated Press reported.

Arthur Lampitt had crashed his Thunderbird into a truck in 1963, an accident that broke his hip. That injury "(drew) attention away from the arm, which healed," AP noted. But about 10 years ago, a slender object the length of a pencil was discovered in Lampitt's arm after he had had it X-rayed on setting off a metal detector at a courthouse.

Because it did not cause any pain and he had full use of his arm, Lampitt was then told no intervention was required, the St. Louis Post Dispatch detailed. But a few weeks ago, as he was moving concrete blocks for a rental home he was repairing, Lampitt could feel a sharp point in his arm for the first time.

"Everything was fine until it started to get bigger," said Betty Lampitt, Arthur's wife of 49 years. "The arm started bulging."

Still, nobody knew exactly what the object was, and the couple speculated about a medical instrument unwittingly stitched up in the emergency room. But reviewing a collection of old photographs of the mangled Thunderbird, the Lampitts soon noticed a metal blinker lever was missing from the left side of the steering column.

Hand surgeon Dr. Timothy Lang, of the at City Place Surgery Center in Creve Coeur, Missouri, removed the object in a procedure Wednesday that lasted last more than 45 minutes. The physician said a protective pocket had grown around the lever.

"We see all kinds of foreign objects like nails or pellets but usually not this large, usually not a turn signal from a 1963 T-Bird," Lang said. "Something this large often gets infected."

And with Lampitt doing well, the only decision left was what to do with the object that accompanied him for more than half a century.

Turning it into a key chain was an option, Lampitt said. "We'll figure out something, I am sure," he said.