When 23-year-old Hannah Hamilton got a sinus infection earlier this year, she did what doctors recommended and rested up.
Little did she know this infection would send her on a voyage of discovery up her nose – where she found an object that had been lodged there for over 20 years.
Like many toddlers, Hannah Hamilton said she always had a vague recollection of sticking a bead up her nose when she was a toddler, but assumed it had made its way out on its own.
She said: ‘The memory I had is of me standing in front of the linen closet in the kid’s bathroom and pulling the bead out of a basket in the closet. I wanted to see if it would fit in my nose but then couldn’t get it out.
‘As far as I remember I didn’t tell my parents, which was a funny choice considering my mom was a nurse of 10 years. About a year ago I was telling my fiancé Zack that I remembered sticking a bead in my nose as a little kid, but I didn’t remember it ever coming out.
‘Of course, I assumed it was not a real memory, maybe something that I had seen or heard from a show or book.’
Hannah, from Smyrna, Georgia, had no reason to think it had really happened, until she contracted the sinus infection.
yes I have pictures. Yes they are disgusting. ? #medical #childhood
With her right nasal passage completely blocked, she thought the culprit was a ‘giant booger’. But when it wouldn’t budge, Hannah used an ear wax camera to see what was going on, seeing a flash of bright blue up her nose.
After some prying, the mystery body was dislodged, and Hannah managed to blow it out. However, she hasn’t quite got over the shock of her decades-old discovery.
‘Once I saw the blue object in my nose, the memory of the bead flooded back to me,’ Hannah said, ‘but I was still convinced that it may be something else.
‘I thought it was a little lid or a piece of a pen I was biting on while studying.
‘Prying it out definitely hurt but not as much as you’d think, and it was only for a few seconds. Once it was out of that between section I blew as hard as I could.
‘I stared at it in amazement because it was huge and was inside me for 20 years. As soon as I got it out I called my fiancé who was just as shocked, amazed, and disgusted as I was.’
Hannah’s recommendation to anyone else with foreign object concerns is essentially to not worry too much – but still see a doctor if there’s a real chance something’s stuck.
She says: ‘My advice to anyone else who suspects they could still have something up their noses from childhood, is that 99% of the time your parents will catch it before you have an issue.
‘Normally by smell, if the item is perishable or porous where bacteria could get in, or by the infections you may develop from the foreign object.
‘But, honestly, better safe than sorry! If you think there’s a chance you should get it checked out, I wish I had checked when I remembered the memory so many years ago.’
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