Joey Lykins, a piercing enthusiast from Cincinnati, Ohio, woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible cough. It felt like something was blocking his airway, and he coughed until his back began to hurt. Finding it hard to breathe, he suspected that he had pneumonia or some other serious respiratory condition. The 35-year-old went to the hospital, where doctors discovered something unusual on his x-ray. When the doctor showed the image to Lykins, he was flabbergasted. He immediately recognized the object as a nose ring he had lost one night five years ago. At the time, he had looked everywhere for it, but finally gave up and just bought another nose ring. At one point, he thought he might have accidentally swallowed the ring, but never imagined that he had inhaled it. He figures it fell off while he slept, traveled down his windpipe, and got stuck in his left lung. Fortunately, it was all wrapped up in scar tissue, so it wasn’t going anywhere. The doctors performed a bronchoscopy to retrieve the ring and Lykins made a full recovery. There’s no word on whether he will continue to wear nose rings.
