This Guy Suffered From Chronic Back Pain for Nearly 3 Years -- He Just Identified the Unbelievable Reason Why

Meet Billy McNeely, a 32-year-old man from Canada who got into a fight with a man over an arm-wrestling match at a birthday party in 2010. The dispute resulted in McNeely being stabbed five times.

He rushed to the hospital and got stitched up by doctors. Then he got on with his life.

But the incident left him with a permanent and painful back itch that wouldn't relent. Earlier this week, he found out what was causing it: a knife blade that had been buried in his skin for nearly three years.

(National Post)

(The Canadian Press)

McNeely told the National Post that he and his girlfriend were asleep in bed when he began having back issues.

"I sat up, I tried to rub it and scratch it the way I always did, and then the tip of my nail caught a piece of something solid, something sharp," he said. "My girlfriend got up and she started playing around with it and she maneuvered my back in a certain way and the tip of a blade poked out of my skin."

He went straight to the hospital and doctors found a blade about 2.5 inches long lodged in his flesh.

“I’ve got it in my pocket right now,” McNeely added.

While the 32-year-old is happy to finally know what was causing his back issues, he is pretty upset that doctors never took an x-ray to make sure he didn't have any internal damage, which would have shown the blade.

“I walked around for close to three years with this thing in my back,” he lamented. “They brushed me off.”

He says he is considering a lawsuit against a hospital in Fort Good Hope, the hospital he went the day he was stabbed.

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(H/T: Gawker)