Man nearly dies after getting nose ring stuck in his lung

By Hannah Phillips via SWNS

A man from Ohio who was coughing violently discovered that his nose ring lung had been stuck in his lung for the past five years.

Joey Lykins, 35, was rushed to hospital at 2.30 am last month, Aug 30, with fears of pneumonia, after coughing so vigorously that he ended up with back ache.

Doctors carried out an x-ray and were stunned to spot the piece of facial jewelry in the upper lobe of his left lung.

Joey, who has 12 piercings, had woken up five years earlier and noticed his septum piercing was missing. He searched his bedroom thoroughly but never found it, so he just replaced it with another.

He kept copies of his x-ray and images from the surgery showing the ring being extracted from his lung (too graphic to show) as proof of his crazy ordeal.

Joey, a groundskeeper, from Cincinnati, said: "About five years ago I woke up and my septum piercing was gone and I couldn't find it anywhere.

"I thought maybe I'd swallowed it. I looked everywhere, I flipped the bed over, I did everything.

"I have a thing for piercings and tattoos so in the end, I just replaced it.

"I woke up [last week] and I was coughing really hard. I felt like something was blocking my airways and I thought I was sick.

"About 2.30 am I was coughing so hard that my back was starting to hurt and I was a little concerned so I went to the hospital. I thought maybe I had pneumonia.

"It felt like there was something there when I was coughing but I just thought I was sick.

"I had an x-ray and the doctor came in and showed me the x-ray picture and said 'does this look familiar?' I was like 'you've got to be kidding me? I've been looking for that.'

"It just went down my windpipe I guess. My wife was dumbfounded when I told her. It's one of those things that's hard to believe unless you have proof."

"The doctor said I'd won best case of the night."

Joey went to see a specialist three days later who put him to sleep while they performed a bronchoscopy where a thin tube was passed down his throat to his lungs. The piercing was pulled out and returned to him.

"I kept it as a souvenir, I won't be wearing it again," he said.

"I don't know if it could have caused damage but it was wrapped up in scar tissue so it didn't look like it was going anywhere. I'm glad it didn't puncture my lung.

"It had never caused me problems before then, I've coughed but I never thought too much of it.

"I didn't know what was going on...I've never heard of that happening before."