Scottish man discovers he's been living with a Lego stuck in his ear for 20 years

Lego bricks are one of the most popular toys for young and old alike. Many children play with the colourful plastic bricks and sometimes accidents happen. Some swallow the individual pieces or stick them in their nose or ear. If this happens, a visit to the doctor is essential, as they can cause serious damage, as a man from Scotland has now learnt.

It was not a middle ear infection, as the doctor suspected

Darren McConachie, a 30-year-old man from Glasgow, Scotland, visited a doctor about six years ago with severe ear pain, who then suspected he suffered from a middle ear infection. He told the Daily Mail:

I thought my ear had ruptured. The pressure kept building and building. It was unbearable.

The former university student went on, explaining:

Then I felt something small and hard sort of pop out. I felt the object and I realised it was loose. I thought it was a piece of my inner ear – I was absolutely terrified.

The object turned out to be something completely different. Indeed it was a small pink Lego brick, and he didn't know where it came from.

The plastic piece must have been in his ear canal for about 20 years

As the 30-year-old explained, he hadn't played with Legos since he was a child, so at most ten years old, which means that the brick must have been in his ear for at least two decades! Initially he had no problems, but a few years ago the man, who works as a PR manager, started complaining about his hearing. He even feared he would go deaf and had no reason why.

The man from Glasgow didn't remember putting a piece in his ear, as he was too young when it happened. He wondered if he had even done this to himself, or whether it was another child in the family. When revealed what had happened to him to his close ones, he said that they wondered the same thing as well:

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 that 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.

This article has been translated from Oh!MyMag DE.

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Sources used:

Bild: Darren hatte 20 Jahre lang einen Legostein im Ohr

Daily Mail: 'I thought I was going deaf… but had a LEGO brick stuck in my ear for 20 YEARS'