The diagnosis was right on the nose.
The queen’s wife, Dana Smith, 37, almost died after contracting an infection due to a nose piercing.
Smith was rushed to hospital in late January with a mysterious infection that doctors later learned was linked to a $ 60 piercing.
She told CBS New York that she lost her appetite in the weeks after she implanted her small diamond pin over her left nostril on a whim during Thanksgiving vacation.
Shortly after realizing he couldn’t tolerate the food, Smith began to have severe stomach pains.
“I didn’t want to go to the hospital with COVID in progress,” she told the station. “It got to the point where I felt I had no choice.”
Her liver began to fail and she was placed in a medically induced coma shortly after arriving at Long Island Jewish and then North Shore University Hospital.
There, doctors diagnosed Smith with very rare liver failure.
“Sudden liver failure is when you’re perfectly healthy, you get a virus, and you fall into a coma in two months,” said Dr. Lewis Tepperman, transplant director at the Sandra Atlas Center for Liver Disease at North Shore University Hospital.
When he woke up from a coma, Smith learned that the infection had become so severe that the medical team performed a liver transplant.
“Even if I had a stomach virus or just something with my stomach,” Smith said. “I never wanted my liver to fail and there’s a chance I wasn’t here today.”
Through the elimination process, doctors discovered that the loss of Smith’s nose was infected with hepatitis B, which triggered her condition.
“We couldn’t figure it out until the whole band was taken from his nose,” said Dr. Tepperman.
“I said, ‘Look at this. When did you get this? He is so small and he told us that it was at the very end of Thanksgiving ”.
Hospitals have seen a recent increase in patients with hepatic impairment.
“I think it’s about people not coming to the hospital early enough, early enough to be treated,” Dr. Tepperman said.
Smith, the 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 in progress, you should check out because you never know,” she said. “That one decision saved my life.”