She believed the pin had lodged in her stomach and would eventually come out of her digestive tract on its own.
However, the metal piece became stuck in her lung, causing her to experience breathing difficulties and agony for weeks until medical professionals removed it.
Varsha,35, had worn a nose pin since her wedding “16–17 years back,” like the majority of married Hindu women in India, since it is seen as a sign of marital status.
“I didn’t know that the screw had come loose,” she said over the phone from Kolkata, an eastern Indian city, to the news.
I was simply chatting when I inhaled a deep breath. It entered my airway, and I was unaware of it. “I believed it had entered my stomach,” the mother of two boys in their teens continued.
Varsha’s case was described as “extremely rare” by Dr. Debraj Jash, a pulmonologist at Medica Superspecialty Hospital, who removed the pin from her lung last month. Only two cases have been reported in the Indian media in the last ten years.