# Teen Secretly Pierces Her Own Nose, X-ray Reveals Hidden metal
A routine trip to the dentist took an unexpected turn for a mother adn daughter in Washington State.
When Ophelia, who requested her real name be omitted from this story, took her 13-year-old to see an orthodontist to “start the process of getting braces,” she could never have predicted what would show up on an X-ray of her daughter’s mouth.
“The orthodontist came back into the room and put the X-rays on the screen,” Ophelia told *Newsweek*. “we all saw it at the same time and spent several minutes trying to figure out what we were looking at.”
What they were looking at appeared to be a small piece of metal that was lodged in her daughter’s sinuses. Ophelia was at a loss to explain how it had gotten there, but one person in the room knew exactly what had happened: her daughter.to understand how they got to this point, you have to go back six months to when Ophelia’s daughter, who had only just turned 13, asked her mom if she could get her nose pierced.
“She had a freind who had just gotten her nose pierced and decided that she wanted to pierce hers as well,” Ophelia saeid. “When she asked, I said she had to wait until she was 16.”
Body piercings are popular among young people. Data compiled by Johns Hopkins Medicine found between 27 and 42 percent of adolescents have had body piercings.
Though Ophelia had allowed her daughter to get her ears pierced, a nose piercing felt like too much too soon. Little did Ophelia know,her daughter was not going to take no for an answer.
“She has very severe ADHD and,at the time,almost zero impulse control,” Ophelia said. “She took the earring that had been used to pierce her ears and tried pushing it through.”
It is recommended that anyone wanting to have a body part pierced has it done by a trained professional.Regrettably, in this instance, Ophelia’s daughter was about to learn that the hard way.
“Apparently, at some point, she decided to try to push it through from the inside,” Ophelia said. “I’m not sure if she sneezed or what happened, but she ended up inhaling the earring. It got stuck in her sinuses.”
The young teen was facing a dilemma. “She didn’t say anything because I had just told her she had to wait on the piercing and she was embarrassed,” Ophelia said. “She couldn’t feel it at all and, after a while, she just kind of forgot it was there or assumed it would work its way out.”