The diagnosis was right on the nose.
The queens ’wife, Dana Smith, 37, died almost after contracting an infection from a piercing of her nose.
Smith was rushed to the hospital in late January with a mysterious infection that doctors later learned was related to the $ 60 piercing.
He told CBS New York that he had lost his appetite for weeks after implanting the small pile of diamonds over his left nostril on a whim during the Thanksgiving holiday.
Shortly after realizing that he was unable to tolerate food, Smith began to experience severe stomach pain.
“I didn’t want to go to the hospital with COVID,” he told the station. “He got to the point where he felt he had no choice.”
The liver began to fail and was placed in a medically induced coma shortly after reaching the Long Island Jew 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 in two months you fall into a coma,” said Dr. Lewis Tepperman, director of transplants at the Sandra Atlas Center for Liver Disease at North Shore University Hospital.
When he woke up from the coma, Smith learned that the infection had gotten so much worse that the medical team did a liver transplant on him.
“Even though I only had a stomach virus or something with my stomach,” Smith said. “I would never have taken into account that the liver was failing and that there was a possibility that he was not here today.”
Through the removal process, doctors discovered that Smith’s nose piercing had become infected with hepatitis B, which caused his illness.
“We couldn’t find out until all the tape was removed from his nose,” Dr. Tepperman said.
“I said, ‘Look at this. When did you get it? It’s so small,’ and then he told us it was right at the end of Thanksgiving.”
Hospitals have experienced a recent positive increase in patients with liver failure.
“I think this has to do with people not coming to the hospital easily enough, early enough to receive treatment,” 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 up and running, you should still go looking for it because you never know,” he said. “That decision saved my life.”