I'm going to tell you about an interesting and instructive experience from a while back. The lesson I take away from this experience is - always do your own research. Be careful about trusting authority, no matter how confident and sure of themselves they are.

My family and I were in a new apartment, and were fixing it up. There were some issues with the shower curtain, it was allowing water to drain out onto the floor. So, we purchased some of those really powerful tiny neodymium magnets to attach to the shower curtain, to make it adhere to the metal of the tub better. Bottom line, we had some neodymium magnets around the house.

My son came up to me, abashed, late one Saturday evening. He said, "I accidentally got something stuck in my nose".

What had happened? He was playing around with the magnets that we had laying about, wanting to pretend he had a nose ring. He ended up putting one on the outside of his nostril, and one on the inside. And there they stayed, he couldn't figure out how to remove them.

We fussed with the magnets for a little while. I did a little bit of research online, and found nothing useful. I touched the metal end of a screwdriver to the magnet, and it didn't come off.

And then I thought - well, they'll know how to handle this at the hospital. So, we went off to the local children's hospital.

They had never seen anything like this. Three doctors tried for a little while to remove it, but had no luck. So they told me and my son to go to the adult emergency room, where there was supposedly also an ear, nose and throat specialist.

It was a Saturday night, with all that a Saturday night at the emergency room means in a big city, rough looking characters and blood on the floor. Anyway, they were able to get my son in pretty quickly, and started trying to remove the magnets.

How did they try to remove them? Well, the doctor tried with some instruments to pry the magnets apart, while he had a nurse holding my son down. And then another nurse. And then another, as my son continued struggling. Finally there were all the spare nurses - 5 of them - trying to hold down my struggling, crying son, with blood dripping off his nose.

The doctor gave up then, and told me that my son would need to undergo general anesthesia, so that he wouldn't be struggling and the doctor could get a good grip on the magnets, to remove them.

And then my son and I were left alone, to wait for surgery. I was shocked that - really? - they would have my son undergo general anesthesia for something like this. I had my phone with, and started doing more research. And instead of searching for "magnet stuck in nose", I included the word "septum", which is a more medical-y word.

And lo and behold, I found a treasure. An emergency room doctor had written a case study of this type of situation. Apparently multiple kids had undergone surgery for this, completely unnecessarily, because...all you need is to touch a heavy metal tool to the magnet. The article mentioned specifically a type of medical tool that would work, I think he recommended using the handle of a forceps or something like that.

I ran over to the doctor, and showed him the article. He immediately went over, grabbed the forceps, touched the magnets on my son's nose with the handle, and the magnets jumped apart.

The ordeal was over.

My son and I walked out of the hospital. The nurse at the reception desk (who had been part of the group that was holding down my son, just moments earlier) was confused, and asked where we were going. I told her we're all done, we're going home.

Thank goodness that was over.

But here's something interesting. My son had been playing with the magnets for a while before sticking them on his nose. When he came to me, for help getting them off, he actually said to me, before we went off to the emergency room, "But can't we use some other magnets to get these ones off?"

Unfortunately, that comment just kind of skated on the top of my consciousness, without really penetrating. In thinking back...of COURSE you could use other magnets, or a big piece of metal. And when I touched the tip of the screwdriver to the magnet on his nose, before we went to the hospital - I actually felt the attraction to the magnet. I just didn't think of experimenting any more, with a larger piece of metal.

Obviously, there were a lot of other people around - the total was about 9, between the 2 hospitals - that also didn't think of this. So I didn't feel that bad about having dragged him to the hospital. And I did eventually find the key to getting him out of this situation, without anything like general anesthesia (which is a lot more damaging than people think).

But I always try to remember in situations like this - think things through. Research. Try to find alternative ideas.