Man sneezes out toy in his nose after 44 years

When Steve Easton was about seven years old, his parents noticed that the suction cup was missing from one of his toy darts, and they were worried he had inhaled or swallowed it. So they took him to the hospital, but doctors couldn't find anything. Yet for decades, he's suffered from sniffles and headaches he thought were a result of allergies.

Now, 44 years later, it turns out his childhood doctors were wrong. In what must have been a powerful sneeze, accompanied by what he calls "a very uncomfortable sensation", the suction cup emerged from the now 51-year-old Easton's nose.

"I started a sneezing fit and it came out of my left nostril,” he says. “I thought, 'What’s this? Where the hell has this come from?' and pulled out this rubber sucker." Easton called his mom, who told him about the hospital visit which he had apparently forgotten.

Doctors at the time said perhaps she was mistaken about her son inhaling the suction cup, she said. "I knew it wasn’t a mistake and it’s always worried me, and now it has suddenly shot out. We are all shocked."

Easton carried the suction cup for a while and shared his story with family and friends but has thrown it away now.