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Remember Tiddlywinks? That's the game where you use a plastic disk to flip smaller disks into a cup. And that's what you need to know to understand what we're dealing with here.
Mary McCarthy, a 45-year-old woman in New Zealand, got tested for COVID back in October. But doctors found something very interesting: a Tiddlywink! that had been stuck up her nose for 37 years!
It was a nasal test, and the swab dislodged it. But it didn't come out at first. Her nose hurt for months after the test and wouldn't stop running. She finally went to the E.R. when the pain got worse. They asked if she had shoved something up there, and she said no, not since she was eight.
It turns out that as a kid, she liked to shove Tiddlywinks in each nostril and blow them out to see how far they'd fly. And one time, she inhaled one but never told her parents. She just pretended it didn't happen and moved on.
A CAT scan at the hospital spotted the Tiddlywink in her upper nose, and she had surgery on Thursday to get it out. They ended up having to push it even farther up her nose, and removed it through her mouth.
Mary says she's always had issues breathing through her nose, but never made the connection that the Tiddlywink might still be up there.