Whoopsies...

I have a nose ring. Much to the initial (and quite possibly continued) chagrin of my mother, I had my nose pierced in 2004 after my eyebrow ring rejected. For whatever reason I felt I needed to replace one piercing with another, so I paid someone to shove some surgical steel through my nose causing my eyes to water profusely for several minutes. Since that date I have always had a smallish hoop in the piercing. I've never been one for nose studs. Today, however, I bought one. A small, surgical steel stud with a small steel ball on each end to keep it anchored in my nostril. I bent the end of it into an L shape to better secure it, thinking if I just didn't twiddle with it, it would remain in place.
I also have allergies. They have been acting up lately and making me sneeze, and making my nose run frequently. Today, my nose started to run. So, politely, I excused myself to the washroom where I took some balled up toilet paper and evacuated the contents of my nose partly by blowing and partly by sniffling. I threw the toilet paper in the toilet and flushed. Only then did I notice my nose no longer had a surgical steel post in it. No, it was long gone.
My concern is that I don't know if I blew it out or in fact managed to somehow inhale the thing. I think I probably would have noticed, but stranger things have happened. Furthermore I know I didn't notice the stud in my balled up toilet paper. Wondering what the consequences of ingesting/inhaling steel are?