New Zealand hospital worker, Mary McCarthy had been living with chronic nose pain for years and although she did have difficulty breathing, she said it never bothered her to the extent where she got it medically checked out.
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Pain after COVID test
However, last year McCarthy had to get aCOVID test,and when her nostrils got invaded with the swab, the pain got ten times worse. Soon after, she developed sinus issues and she wasn’t able to breathe out of her right nostril for months. The doctors assumed that the sinuses were to blame but one day McCarthy was in so much agony that she had to be rushed to the emergency department.
She then got a CT scan which revealed that there was an odd object deep inside her nose. Unfortunately no one could tell what it was, so she went under the knife. When the surgeons found what was stuck in her nose and showed it to her, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
A yellow tiddlywinks piece
The surgeons pulled out a yellow tiddlywinks piece—a tiny flat disc used in an English game called Tiddlywinks—and it had apparently been lodged in there for 37 years! Despite being inside a dark crevice for three decades, the little token remained intact. McCarthy told Stuff:
It hadn’t even lost its colour. There was calcification around it and that was probably why my nose had grown a bit crooked.
She then recalled the incident that she believes was the beginning of this very unusual and long story, she said:
One time I accidentally inhaled one instead of blowing it out, and I was a bit too scared to tell my mother, so I didn’t.
I remember being terrified at the time, thinking ‘where it has gone.’
I always had difficulties breathing through my nose over the years but never gave it much thought.
