Marble from boy's nose removed 6 yrs later

Six years after being swallowed, doctors removed the marble with a long thin device.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Six years after two-year-old Guy Hazan of Ma'alot swallowed a blue marble - it caused a lot of trouble since then - it was removed from his nose at Ziv Hospital in Safed on Thursday. The rare occurrence began when Guy was playing with the marble and gulped it down. Doctors then performed a chest X-ray and other tests and couldn't find it, so they thought it would be eliminated naturally. But the glass sphere remained in his body, causing infections, breathing difficulties at night and dripping pus from one nostril - except that nobody knew it. Dr. Peter Gilbey of the hospital's ear-nose-and-throat department said the case was rare because of the location of the marble - in the back part of the right part of the nose - and for the long amount of time it was lodged there. The day after he was able to locate it, the marble was removed by pushing it out with long thin device in the nose into the mouth. Guy was put under anesthesia, and in a few minutes, the marble popped out. The boy - now eight - is feeling fine. The boy's father, Yossi Hazan, said Guy was over the years treated by a series of doctors. They gave him various types of antibiotics, but nothing improved his nasal condition. "Nobody thought it was the marble causing it." Gibli sent the boy for a facial X-ray, and all were shocked to find the sphere of glass there. Now Guy's father is saving it as a memento. Sometimes children put marbles into their mouths, but it's too big to be pushed into the nose, said Gilbey. This one was swallowed and migrated from there into the nose. "The parents and his doctors had thought it was eliminated through the bowel, but it hadn't, so they never told their doctors that it might be causing the nose problems," he told The Jerusalem Post.