- How drunk do you need to be to not realize you just got a chopstick jammed into your skull?
If you’ve ever had an eye infection, like pink eye, you know it’s a real pain. Your eye may hurt, be unbearably itchy, and get stuck shut with all the gunk oozing out of it.
Still, it’s nothing compared to what this Vietnamese man went through.
The 24-year-old man had been suffering from an eye infection for three weeks. He had visited a local doctor, who had confirmed his eyesight was fine and prescribed him medication.
As his symptoms only got worse, the man traveled to a more well-established hospital. The doctors again confirmed his vision was unaffected, but his eye was obviously badly infected.
Just to be safe, they decided to give the man a CT scan. The results quickly revealed the root of the problem.
There was a three-inch piece of chopstick lodged behind the man’s eyeball.
The man had no idea how the chopstick ended up inside his skull, but he did recall having a drunken tumble with his friend during a recent party. The chopstick likely got thrust into his head as he fell, but he was simply too drunk to realize it.
Fortunately, the doctors were able to pull the chopstick out without problems. But this case highlights that you should be careful with all sharp objects — especially if you’re drunk out of your mind.
Mysterious Infection
The 24-year-old man, whose identity hasn’t been reported, began experiencing issues with his left eye soon after attending a party with his friends. His eye got sore and became visibly swollen.
As the problem wasn’t going away on its own, he sought help from a local doctor in his hometown. The doctor inspected his eye and noted the swelling, but otherwise, the eye seemed all right.
The man’s vision was as good as it had ever been, and the doctor didn’t notice any foreign objects around his eye. So, he prescribed him some medicine and sent him on his way.
Unfortunately for our guy, the medication didn’t do squat. If anything, his symptoms only kept getting worse.
It’s a… Stick?
His eye finally got so painful that the man decided he needed more advanced medical care. So, he traveled to the Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy in the southern Vietnamese city of Can Tho.
At the university hospital, the doctors initially gave him pretty much the same diagnosis as the local doctor. They noted that his vision was perfect and there were no obvious signs of any damage to his eyeball.
However, the man’s eye was at this point heavily swollen and it was leaking pus out of one corner. Clearly, something was wrong, so the doctors sent the man to get a CT scan.
The scan results immediately unveiled the cause of the eye infection. Behind the man’s left eyeball was a roughly three-inch-long foreign object.
A quick examination revealed that the object was a piece of a wooden chopstick.
Drunken Accident
The man had somehow managed to get a chopstick jammed into his head, penetrating one of his sinuses and becoming stuck behind his eyeball. Fortunately, the chopstick had managed to miss his eyeball and all other important bits.
Naturally, the doctors wanted to know how on earth this had happened. To their surprise, the man had no idea where the chopstick had come from.
He eventually recalled that during the party three weeks ago, he had collided with his friend in a drunken stupor and fallen. That said, he didn’t remember either of them holding chopsticks or experiencing any pain during the incident.
You can’t help but wonder how drunk the guys were.
In the end, however, it mattered little how the chopstick got behind the man’s eye — the important part was getting it out. He was rushed to a surgery room where he was given the Caldwell-Luc operation.
Essentially, the doctors had to drill a hole into the man’s sinus through his gums. Through the opening, they were able to pull the stick out.
They also gave the man’s sinus a thorough rinse. After all, the chopstick was caked in food remnants and they didn’t want the guy to suffer a new infection afterward.
It Keeps Happening
Bizarre as this case sounds, it’s not actually that uncommon. Chopsticks are sharp, so people in chopstick-using Asian countries get them stuck in their (or other people’s) bodies semi-regularly.
Take, for instance, the case of another Vietnamese man from 2023. He, too, had a rowdy night of drinking and developed horrible headaches afterward.
After suffering for months, he finally went to see a doctor when he found a foreign object deep in his nose. Turns out, he had a chopstick embedded in his brain that had miraculously missed all vitally important parts.
That story, too, has a happy ending. Doctors removed the brain-invading chopstick and the man recovered well.