Pencil removed from head after 55 years

Margaret Wegner was just 4 years old when she had an accident. She fell while carrying an 8 cm-long pencil, which lodged in her head.

Photo: Pencil removed from head after 55 years

“It bored right through the skin of my cheek and disappeared into my head. It hurt like crazy,” Margaret Wegner, 59, the wife of German boxing coach Ulli Wegner, was quoted as saying by the German newspaper Bild.

Doctors dared not remove the pencil from her head because no technology existed at the time to safely remove a foreign body from a patient’s head. It was a miracle that the pencil had not affected the aorta and the optic nerve. Though the trauma did not pose a clear threat to Wegner’s life, it brought about the chronic headaches and nosebleeds. The woman had to live with it for the next fifty-five years.

Wegner’s sufferings ended last week after doctors at Berlin’s Park-Klinik Weissensee finally took most of the pencil from her head. The operation was a success though a 2-cm piece of the pencil, that broke off and grew deep in the soft tissues, could not be removed.

According to doctors, it does not present a danger to the patient.

Komsomolskaya Pravda

Translated by Guerman Grachev