A 10-year-old boy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, arrived at the hospital with swelling and pain around his left eye. An MRI showed a lesion that was initially read as an orbital tumor, possibly a nerve-sheath growth called a schwannoma. No injury or wound was identified, and he was lost to follow-up.
Five months later, he came back with worse swelling, pus, and a draining tract. Repeat imaging raised suspicion of something else, and surgery uncovered multiple fragments of wood hidden in the tissue around the eye. The case, from St. Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College, was published Aug. 13 in Radiology Case Reports.
