The diagnosis was right on the nose.
Queens’ wife, Dana Smith, 37, nearly died after contracting an infection through a nostril.
Smith was rushed to the hospital in late January with a mysterious infection that doctors later learned was related to the $ 60 piercing.
She told CBS New York that she lost her appetite in the weeks after she implanted the small diamond bud above her left nostril during the Thanksgiving holiday.
Shortly after realizing she could not stand food, Smith developed severe stomach pains.
“I did not want to go to the hospital with COVID,” she told the station. “It got to the point that 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.
“Full-blown liver failure is when you are completely healthy, you contract a virus and fall into a coma within two months,” said Dr. Lewis Tepperman, director of transplantation at the Sandra Atlas Center for Liver Diseases at North Shore University Hospital, said.
When she woke up from her coma, Smith learned that the infection had become so severe, that the medical team gave her a liver transplant.
“I just had a stomach virus or just had something with my stomach,” Smith said. “However, I would never have wished that my liver had weakened and that there was a chance that I would not have been here today.”
Through the process of elimination, doctors discovered that Smith’s nosebleed had become infected with hepatitis B, which was causing her ailments.
“We could not notice it until all the tape had been removed from her nose,” said Dr. Tepperman said.
“I said, ‘Look at that.’ When did you get it? It’s so small, ‘and then she told us it was at the end of the Thanksgiving.’
Hospitals have recently seen an increase in patients with liver failure.
“I think it has to do with people not getting to the hospital easily enough, early enough to be treated,” said Dr. Tepperman said.
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 if COVID is going on, you still have to go and look, because you never know,” she said. “That one decision saved my life.”