Warning: Don't Pick Your Nose with Chopsticks

Headlines: 14-month-old boy survives after chopstick pierces nose, lodges in brain

A young Chinese boy had to undergo brain surgery after a chopstick became stuck in his nose while playing.

Doctors say the 14-month old accidentally fell on it, piercing his nose and lodging inside his skull.
"It touched upon the deep area of his brain, four centimeters of the chopstick was inside his skull," Dr. Shun Wei told CNN. "The position of the chopstick was very, very lucky for him." Zhao Guilu was in another room washing dishes when she heard her son, Li Jingchao, crying and came running.

The boy was lying on the ground wailing with the stick protruding from his head.
"I rushed in and saw him lying on the ground," Guilu said. "He couldn't stop crying and I noticed a chopstick stuck in his nose."

The boy's panicked mother rushed the child to a nearby medical clinic, but doctors feared it was too risky to remove the stick. A relative offered to drive the the boy and his parents hundreds of miles to Beijing instead.

"I thought at that time, it is all over, my boy will die," father Li Guanglai said.
"During the 10 hours of driving, I felt depressed, I could barely breathe. I looked at my boy and his right side was numb, he was paralyzed."

Neurosurgeons in Beijing feared removing the chopstick would rupture an artery and got the child ready for surgery. Yet when they pulled it, it came straight out easily.

Doctors say the boy had a lucky escape, and he could have been permanently paralyzed or died if the stick has been a few millimeters to either side, or further in.
"I never thought it would be this successful," his father said. "This hospital gave him a second life."

Also, here is a rather irreverant take on the same news story: