Art Lampitt took "New Year, New Me" to the extreme for 2015: he spent this past New Year's Eve in surgery to remove a seven inch metal rod that had been embedded in his forearm for the past 51 years.

In 1963 a 24-year-old Art Lampitt was involved in a car accident that nearly cost the used car salesman his life. "It was a God awful accident and it was not very probable that someone would come through something like that — they figured," Lampitt told USA Today. "And, yeah, I was reported being dead by one of the radio stations,"

The accident left Lampitt with four to five broken ribs, a severely broken hip, and glass shards in his arm. He spent eight weeks in a body cast and required a tracheotomy to help ease his breathing. The damage caused by the glass shards caused doctors to overlook the turning signal to his ’63 T-bird that was embedded in his left forearm.

It wasn’t until 15 years later when Lampitt set off the metal detector at a local courthouse that he even suspected that there was something wrong with his arm. Even then doctors didn’t know what to make of it.

This year, the arm began to hurt, and Lampitt noticed that there seemed to be something protruding from it. Doctors knew something needed to be done. After a 45-minute procedure, surgeons unearthed a seven-inch rod from Lampitt’s forearm.“I was amazed to see how corroded it was. It's almost got all of the chrome off of it," Lampitt said.

Lampitt is recovering and says he is happy to begin 2015 in the best health possible. He has even kept the rod as a souvenir of his half-century ordeal.