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The diagnosis was right on the nose.
Queen Dana Smith’s wife, 37, almost died after contracting an infection from a nose piercing.
Smith was rushed to hospital in late January with a mysterious infection that doctors later learned was linked to the $ 60 piercing.
She told CBS New York that she lost her appetite within weeks of implanting the tiny diamond above her left nostril on a whim during the Thanksgiving holiday.
Soon after realizing that she couldn’t tolerate the food, Smith began to experience severe stomach pain.
“I didn’t want to go to the hospital with COVID,” she told the station. “I got to the point where I felt I had no choice.”
Her liver began to fail and she was placed in a medical coma soon after arriving at Long Island Jewish Hospital and then North Shore Teaching Hospital.
There, doctors diagnosed Smith with very rare liver failure.
“Fulminating liver failure occurs when you are in perfect health, contract a virus and within two months you fall into a coma,” said Dr Lewis Tepperman, director of transplantation at the Sandra Atlas Center for liver disease at North Shore University Hospital.
When she woke up from her coma, Smith learned that the infection had become so severe that the medical team had given her a liver transplant.
“I just thought I just had a stomach virus or just something with my stomach,” Smith said. “I never would have thought my liver was failing and there was a chance I didn’t come here today.
Through the process of removal, doctors discovered that Smith’s nose piercing had been infected with hepatitis B, which triggered his ailments.
“We couldn’t figure it out until the whole tape was removed from his nose,” Dr. Tepperman said.
“I said, ‘Look at this. When did you get this? It’s so small, ”and then told us it was right at the end of Thanksgiving.
Hospitals have recently seen an increase in the number of patients with liver failure.
“I think it has to do with people who don’t come to the hospital easily enough, early enough to be treated,” Dr. Tepperman said.
Smith, a mother of a teenage daughter, encourages others to seek medical attention as soon as they begin to experience severe pain, discomfort, or illness.
“Even with COVID, you should still go get checked out because you never know,” she says. “This one decision saved my life.”
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