A Scottish man has relayed the story of how a tiny Lego piece stuck in his ear ‘for the best part of 20 years’ caused hearing loss until it popped out one night.
The Daily Mail reported that Darren McConachie, 30, from Glasgow, believed he was going deaf at age 24 and saw a doctor, receiving antibiotics for a presumed ear infection.
A few days later he woke in the night with his left ear in agony and sat up in bed, feeling a surge of pressure in the side of his head before feeling something dislodge in his ear and move, the newspaper reported.
“I thought my ear had ruptured. The pressure kept building and building. It was unbearable,” he said. “Then I felt something small and hard sort of pop out. I felt the object and realised it was loose.
“I thought it was a piece of my inner ear – I was absolutely terrified. But as I held the little object in my hand – using my phone torch in the dark – I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. A tiny piece of pink Lego, covered in wax.”
With the pain, pressure and Lego piece gone, the sound returned in his left ear, and he said his hearing was now very good.
McConachie, a journalism student, said he had not played with Lego since he was aged four or five as he preferred playing with wrestling figures and football with his brothers.
“I don’t remember sticking the brick in my ear but however it got there, I reckon it was lodged there for the best part of 20 years,” he told The Daily Mail, adding that his hearing problems had started in his 20s.
“My brothers enjoyed making a few jokes about the situation and we all wondered who’d put it in my ear, I don’t think I would have put a piece of Lego in my own ear. One of my brothers looked more sheepish than the others but I can’t say with absolute certainty that he did it.”
McConachie retold his story to help raise awareness of cerumen removal using microsuction.
A Melbourne audiologist recently told HPA that Lego, bugs, beads and styrofoam balls were among the items he had removed from people’s ears over the years.
“We must remove these objects safely without causing bleeding, scratching or other trauma to the ear canal,” he added.
