Doctors who performed an x-ray on a woman who suffered a stomach ache for six months were shocked to discover a fountain pen lodged inside her.

Student Shing Fang, 20, went to a hospital in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, after the persistent pain became so unbearable she could no longer eat.

When doctors carried out an endoscopy, by inserting a camera through her mouth and into her stomach, they were amazed to find a long thin object badly corroded by stomach acid..

After ordering an x-ray, there were shocked when they realised that the four-inch long object was a fountain pen that had been there for around half a year.

The doctors operated immediately and removed the pen.

They warned that if it had been there any longer, it could have led to peritonitis, or even death.

As to how the pen got there, the young woman said she had no memory at all of swallowing it.

However, she agreed that it might well have been ingested after drinking too much when celebrating good exam results.

You might think you’d love to escape this busy world and spend some time alone with your thoughts. But a new study of people who did that shows that many of them found it wasn’t very fun.

Some even started giving themselves electric shocks as the minutes ticked by, apparently out of boredom.

Overall, the study found that when people were left alone to think for six to 15 minutes, they rated the experience on average in about the middle of a 9-point scale of enjoyment. About half gave it a rating at the halfway mark or below.

The study was released Thursday by the journal Science.