He Had Headaches for Months. Doctors Made a Surprising Find

Vietnamese man hadn't realized someone had shoved chopsticks up his nose in drunken brawl
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 4, 2023 8:20 AM CST
Updated Dec 9, 2023 6:00 AM CST
Somehow This Guy Forgot Someone Shoved Chopsticks Up His Nose
Stock photo.   (Getty Images/akiyoko)

When a man presented himself last month at Vietnam's Cuba Friendship Hospital in Dong Hoi with complaints of bad headaches, vision loss, and fluid coming out of his nose that he'd been suffering for months, doctors arranged for a CT scan, as the 35-year-old couldn't think of anything that would've triggered his maladies. When the scans came back, they showed something somewhat surprising—"two foreign objects protruding from his nose into his brain," per Oddity Central. What those two objects turned out to be was even more unexpected: They were broken chopsticks that had somehow been shoved up the patient's nose.

After doing some thinking, the man recalled a drunken brawl he'd been in five months earlier that sent him to the emergency room. Doctors back then found nothing seriously wrong with him, but the patient says he now thinks that the person he'd fought likely sent the chopsticks into his skull that night. The man was "left bemused" at the fact that he'd had something shoved up his nose and not realized it, per the New Zealand Herald.

Doctors were similarly thrown, with Dr. Nguyen Van Man, the head of Cuba Friendship Hospital's neurosurgery department, calling the case "very rare," reports WION. Surgeons were able to remove the chopsticks via endoscopic surgery through the man's nose, combined with microsurgery to close his cranial fistula. He was soon deemed in stable condition and allowed to return home. (More strange stuff stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X