The diagnosis was on the nose.
Queen’s wife Dana Smith, 37, nearly died after contracting an infection from a nose piercing.
Smith was rushed to hospital in late January with a mysterious infection that doctors later discovered was linked to the $ 60 piercing.
She told CBS New York that she had lost her appetite in the weeks after implanting the tiny diamond stud above her left nostril on a whim over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Shortly after realizing she could not tolerate food, Smith began to have severe stomach pains.
“I didn’t want to go to the hospital with COVID going on,” she told the agency. “It got to the point where I felt like I had no choice.”
Her liver began to fail and she was placed in a medically induced coma shortly after her arrival at Jewish Long Island and then North Shore University Hospital.
There, doctors diagnosed Smith with a very rare liver failure.
“Fulminant liver failure is when you are perfectly healthy, you contract a virus and go into a coma within two months,” says Dr. Lewis Tepperman, director of transplantation at the Sandra Atlas Center for Liver Disease at North Shore University Hospital.
When she awoke from her coma, Smith learned that the infection had gotten so bad that the medical team gave her a liver transplant.
“I thought I just had a stomach bug or just something with my stomach,” Smith said. “I never thought my liver would fail and there was a chance I might not have been here today.”
Through elimination, doctors discovered that Smith’s nose piercing had become infected with hepatitis B, which started her ailments.
“We didn’t get out until all the tape was removed from her nose,” said Dr. Tepperman.
“I said, ‘Look at that. When did you get that? It’s so small,’ and then she told us it was right at the end of Thanksgiving.”
Hospitals have seen a recent resurgence in patients with liver failure.
“I think that has to do with people not getting to the hospital fast enough, early enough to be treated,” said Dr. Tepperman.
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 going on, you should still go and see, because you never know,” she said. “That one decision saved my life.”