Woman discovers missing nose ring traveled to her lungs, causing month-long cough

A TikToker in Mexico thought her cough that wouldn’t go away was just a reaction to the changing weather. Instead, it was her own nose ring, lodged deep within her lungs.

The 26-year-old, Monica Deyanira Cabrera Barajas, recently went viral on TikTok, amassing 4.7 million views after revealing the freak medical accident.

In videos, she shared that the stray accessory sat a mere 0.5 millimeters from her aorta, Jam Press reported.

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Deyanira, who has a large number of piercings, didn't initially notice the jewelry was missing. It wasn't until she developed a "chronic cough" lasting over a month that she went to see a doctor.

"The only theory I have, which I told the pulmonologist, is that I fell asleep, the little ball fell out, and that was it," Deyanira told creatorzine.com.

"I was lying on my back, I didn't realize, and that's how I messed up."

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What was supposed to be a routine 20-minute extraction turned into a high-stakes medical procedure. During the initial attempt, surgeons were unable to budge the object because it had already begun attaching to her internal tissue.

"It ended up taking an hour and 20 minutes, and they still couldn’t remove it because it was attached to my body," she said, according to the Jam Press report.

Facing a second, more invasive surgery and the risk of a fatal hemorrhage, Deyanira prepared for the worst. The night before the surgery, she wrote a farewell letter to her loved ones.

"I was honestly thinking, ‘I'm going to die,'" she said. "It's a horror I wouldn't wish on anyone."

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The woman's surgeon was equally stunned by how close the metal was to her heart. According to Deyanira, the doctor told her, "It seems God takes care of his creatures."

If the metal had punctured her lung or heart before doctors discovered it, Deyanira said she likely would have died from a lung collapse or perforated aorta.

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Now, the TikToker says her days of septum rings are over.

"I love piercings, and I really liked my septum piercing, but in my case, I wouldn't get it again because of the terror I experienced," she said.

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Followers commented that the ordeal "unlocked a fear I didn't know I had."