A 24-year-old man from Afghanistan spent 15 years living with a pencil lodged in his head and finally sought treatment for his constant headaches, colds and worsening vision in one eye, AP reports.

Germany’s Aachen University Hospital says a computer tomography scan showed a 4-inch pencil extending from the man’s sinus to his pharynx, which injured his right eye socket. The man says he remembers a childhood accident that may have caused the injury.

The pencil was removed and doctors said the man’s symptoms were cured. Hospital spokesman Mathias Brandstaedter said the 2011 case came to light during a medical conference in Essen on Tuesday by Professor Frank Hoelzle of Aachen University, BBC reports.

In a similar case, in January 20-month-old Olivia Smith fell and got a pencil stuck through her eye and into her brain, WHDH reports.

“I picked her up like this and said, ‘You’re okay.’ And the pencil was coming right out of her eye only a little bit,” Susie Smith, Olivia’s mother, said.

About five inches of the pencil went through the infant’s eye, which was successfully removed by doctors. She can now see clearly.

"It made my eyes definitely open to everything else that goes on that you don't think about," Smith told the New Hampshire Union Leader. "You think about your day-to-day stuff. We're so lucky."

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