Lifestyle

NEW FEAR UNLOCKED

Woman Discovers Life-Threatening Cause of Her Mystery Cough

A simple cough turned into a terrifying situation.

Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

PublishedApr 10, 2026, 5:32 PM EDT

UpdatedApr 10, 2026, 5:39 PM EDT

Updated Apr 10, 2026, 5:39 PM EDTPublished Apr 10, 2026, 5:32 PM EDT

A 26-year-old woman suffered from a month-long cough before doctors figured out its life-threatening cause.

In a now-viral video, Mexican TikTok user Monica Deyanira Cabrera Barajas poses a simple question to the camera: “What if I get a septum piercing?”

Her friend replies innocently, “Well, what could happen?” In Barajas’s case, plenty.

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The video then shows the young woman in a hospital bed. Barajas had suffered from a month-long chronic cough, according to The New York Post, leading her to see a doctor.

The X-ray photos of her chest revealed that the cause of her cough was a foreign object: the circular barbell from her septum piercing.

Barajas, who already had many piercings, didn’t notice it was missing until seeing the X-ray. She believes the endpiece detached, and that she swallowed it while sleeping on her back.

Doctors informed her that the piercing was just 0.02 inches away from her aorta. The surgery was a challenging one, as the doctors noticed the piercing had already started to stick to her tissue.

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“It ended up taking an hour and 20 minutes, and they still couldn’t remove it because it was attached to my body,” Barajas recalled.

The initial surgery proved unsuccessful, leading Barajas to prepare herself for a second, riskier one. Fearing the worst-case scenario, she composed a letter to her loved ones to say goodbye the night before surgery.

“I was honestly thinking, ‘I’m going to die.’ It’s a horror I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” Barajas said.

She recalled the surgeon being shocked by how close the piercing was to her heart. If it had not been found when it was, it could have punctured Barajas’s heart or lung and been deadly.

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The second surgery was successful, and in her TikTok video, Barajas held the piercing in a class jar after it was extracted.

She ended the video with the words, “Friends, remember to take your earrings off before going to sleep.”

She has no plans to get another nose piercing, stating, “I love piercings, and I really liked my septum piercing, but in my case, I wouldn’t get it again because of the terror I experienced.”

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In the comments, people wondered how she had swallowed the piercing without noticing—and stated that Barajas’s story had “unlocked a new fear” in them.

Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

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