Woman discovers she had a toy stuck in her nose for 37 years thanks to COVID-19 test

June
28, 2021

4 min read

The amount of foreign objects that can be housed in the human body will never cease to amaze us. A woman named Mary McCarthy discovered by accident that she had a toy stuck in her nose for 37 years . The curious finding occurred after going to be tested for Covid-19 , when medical personnel found a plastic card in his nasal passage.

The 45-year-old woman, who works in a hospital kitchen in the city of Arlington, New Zealand, had had pain in her nose and shortness of breath for decades. Having to deal with more serious problems than that in his life, he ignored it for a long time.

According to a local media report, in October 2020 McCarthy was tested for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This caused him more pain than usual and the discomfort lasted for weeks. He went to various hospitals where he was told that he had a chronic sinus condition .

Seeing that they were not helping him, he decided to make an appointment with an otolaryngologist in a private hospital, but he could not hold out until that date. Last Wednesday, Mary left work in a lot of pain and the only option she had was to go to the emergency room at Christchurch Hospital .  

There they asked her if she had ever got something stuck inside her nose and she told them that as a child she loved to play ‘Tiddlywinks’ with her siblings. It is a game known in Spanish as ‘jumping flea’, which consists of trying to put small pieces of plastic into a glass by pressing them with another piece that makes them fly. However, she and her brothers altered the game, according to an Australian outlet .

^{This is ‘Tiddlywinks’ or ‘Jumping Flea’ game. One of his chips ended up getting stuck in the nose of a New Zealand woman for 37 years. Imagine via Depositphotos.}

The McCarthy brothers put the pieces up to their noses and blew to see how far they could go. At age eight, Mary inhaled a piece instead of blowing. He says he was afraid to tell his mother, so he kept the secret and the piece stayed on his nose all this time.

Once in the hospital, they tried to remove the toy while she was awake, but the piece was too large. They had to operate on her and take the token out of her mouth. When the doctor returned the piece to Mary, they noticed that it had not lost its color, but that calcification had formed around it , which explains why the woman’s nose grew a little crooked.

The story amuses Mary and says that she is now excited to live a life that is easier to breathe.