Woman had pool cue tip stuck up her nose for 12 years

A woman with a cold coughed violently — and dislodged the tip of a pool cue that had been stuck up her nose for twelve years. Chantel Faill, 31, endured constant headaches, infections and flu-like symptoms without knowing why. But after the 2cm cue tip emerged — covered by "unhealthy" tissue that had grown over it — her illnesses were traced back to a freak accident she suffered in 1999.

Mother-of-three Chantel was in a pub when a male friend holding a pool cue in the crook of his arm gave her a bear hug. The cue speared the top of her mouth and she was taken to hospital. But medics gave her only pain relief. Had she been X-rayed, it would have shown the tip had come away from the cue and pierced a cheek bone. It worked its way into a sinus before finally moving into a nasal passage.


Photos from SWNS.

Chantel said it was a "huge shock" when she coughed it out. She has since had surgery to completely clear her nose and is now recovering at home in Broughton, Lincs, with her partner and children aged nine, six and two. Chantel told how successive medical examinations failed to discover the cause of her sniffles and aches. She said: "I never thought it was anything to do with the accident. In summer I'd write it off as hay fever or being pregnant or just feeling unwell.

"And in winter I just thought I had flu or a bad cold. It was always one side of my face. My nose was always running or blocked. It felt like a huge build-up of pressure and I could never understand it." Consultant Mohamed Abbas-Ali, of Scunthorpe Hospital, said: "It's not uncommon for tooth-filling amalgam to lodge in the sinus cavity but it is the first time I have heard of a pool cue tip."