Getting a severe case of the sniffles can really be a bother, especially if it keeps coming back to annoy you from time to time.
That is what had plagued Steve Easton, a 51-year-old man from Camberley in the United Kingdom, for most of his life. He had been agonized by a recurrent runny nose and headaches for the past 44 years.
Easton thought it was just regular hay fever, but during one of these episodes, he finally sneezed out the reason of all his suffering-a toy dart.
A sucker tip from a toy dart apparently lodged its way in Easton's nasal cavity and has been there since the 1970s.
"I started a sneezing fit and it came out my left nostril," he said. "I thought, 'What's this? Where the hell has this come from?' and pulled out this rubber sucker. I was completely blown away."
Easton asked his mother, Pat, who is now 77 years old, about how the toy dart got stuck up his nose. She told him that they took him to the hospital when he was still seven years old because they thought he inhaled one.
Mrs. Easton recounted how she and her husband, Quentin, saw Steve playing with his toy dart gun one day at their Camberley home. They soon became worried when they found out the rubber tip of one of the toy darts was missing.
"I took him to the hospital and they spent a lot of time looking for it but in the end they said perhaps it was a mistake," she said.
"I knew it wasn't and it's always worried me and then now it has suddenly shot out. It was weird. We are all shocked."
According to Easton, he always suffered from hay fever and sniffles ever since he was a toddler, but he never suspected that the toy dart inside him was the cause.
He only found out when he was able to sneeze it out while working on his computer one day in March. The slightly decomposed dart tip was the size of a penny.
Easton said he consulted his doctor about it but he told him that he was fine. The doctor said "it's just one of those things."
"It had been there in my nasal cavity for 44 years," Easton said. "I was completely unaware that it was in my nose for that long."
"I feel no different now. I wonder if there's anything else up there."
Photo: Joe Loong | Flickr
