Back when I was a pediatric resident working in the emergency room, I saw, at least three times a week, kids with foreign objects stuck in various orifices. There were dozens of kids who swallowed coins (yes, most of them eventually pass, but many do get stuck in various anatomically “tight” regions of the esophagus). There was a 3 year old who got a peanut stuck in his trachea, and another one who got a piece of steak stuck down there. There was an 18 month old with a raisin deep down in his ear. The most interesting one was a 17 year old (yes, a teenager), who had a thumbtack in his trachea. The story was that he was putting up a banner at school and had a thumbtack between his lips. Suddenly, he inhaled to sneeze, and the thumbtack just flew straight into his windpipe. And then it didn’t come out when he sneezed. You could see the thumbtack clearly on chest x-ray.
Anyway, you can see where I’m heading with this. We were driving to a restaurant for lunch today, when suddenly, we heard Eleanor start whining. She had a finger up her nose, so Bernard and I had the same thought–she was picking her nose too vigorously and caused a nose bleed, or irritated something. We both started yelling, “Get your finger out of your nose!” When she moved her finger though, I suddenly saw a flash of color. I yelled, “Oh my God, she has a bead in her nose! Pull over!”
So she and Miranda were playing with these little plastic beads that they got from school. They’re really great for occupying them–they can spend a half hour just stringing all the beads onto a necklace. And the assumption is, once they’re in preschool they know not to put inappropriate things into their bodies and they can chew and swallow more challenging foods. For example, there are no whole grapes, raisins, hard candy, nuts, or popcorn allowed in the toddler class, but they’re okay in the preschool. Well, apparently this is not a good assumption.
So Bernard pulled into a shopping center and I climbed into the back seat. It was really lodged in her nostril and there was no way, using fingers, to get it out. I needed tweezers. Luckily, there was a drug store across the street and Bernard raced over there to get some. In the meantime, I had to keep Eleanor calm, so that she wouldn’t inhale it. I also kept a finger on the bridge of her nose to keep it from moving upwards. I had no way to keep it from moving back into her pharynx though. Miranda kept craning her head over saying, “I wanna see it!”
I let Miranda out of her car seat and she looked up Eleanor’s nose. “Oooh, it’s green!” she said.
I didn’t bother asking Eleanor why she put a bead up her nose. I did make her promise not to put things up her nose though. Then, we sang a few songs and Bernard was back with the tweezers. Luckily, the hole in the middle of the bead was still visible, so I was able to yank it out fairly easily. Eleanor saw the bead on the tip of the tweezer, then, she picked up the bag with the rest of her beads, handed it to me and said, “Here, I don’t want them anymore.”