Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Urgent Care vs. The clay ball


A few weeks ago, early one morning, I had a bloody nose. I put some tissue up my nose and started reading my scriptures. When the twins awoke, Amelia and Cooper were pretty interested with the tissue in my nose. They had never seen such a thing. I am guessing that they never had supposed that anything besides fingers and boogers could even go in the nose.

The next day Amelia was sitting in the back of the van when she discovered a rouge napkin back there. She decided to see if she could shove the napkin up her nose. After the whole thing didn't fit, she tore it into tiny pieces and shoved it up her nose.The problem was that the pieces were too tiny and she then couldn't get them out. She freaked out but as soon as we got home, I got out the tweezers and I was able to pull them out. We talked about how nothing goes in the nose and she was so traumatized, I thought that would be the end of that...

Fast forward to yesterday and we were on our way to Costco to pick up a few gluten free essentials that only Costco has. We had just picked our boys up at their weekly day of school. Turner takes a pottery class and had a bunch of mini ceramic creations that he had created. He had a tiny gun, the cutest mommy and baby bunny, a couple dice, and a few of other assorted shapes and creations. I have NO IDEA why but he gave Amelia a little tiny ball that was about the size of a large pea. 

Well, what do you do with a mini ceramic ball? Stick it up your nose of course! Amelia stuck it up far enough that she couldn't get it out. In the rear-view mirror, I could still see it so I figured that the tweezers would do the trick again. So I continued on our Costco errand. She was still complaining about the foreign resident in her nose as we left. About 10 minutes before we arrived at home, Amelia and Cooper both succumbed to sleep and were sleeping peacefully when we arrived home. There was no way I was waking up the ornery toddlers. They slept in the car for about an hour while I started a new book and the boys played outside on an unusually warm(ish) February day. 

When the clock struck 5 it was time to wake the tiny tired kiddos. Then I got the tweezers and prepped for clay ball extraction. The clay had been fired but not glazed so I assumed that the texture of the surface would make it easy to grab hold and yank. NOPE! I tried several times but as I attempted removal I was pushing it in further and further. By this time, Josh was on his way home so I decided to wait and see if he could get it out. When he came in the house he greeted us then got to work. Again, Josh was just pushing it back farther. The only option was urgent care.

We went to our local Tanner Clinic and explained our predicament. The receptionist told us about a daycare she use to work at that had pea gravel. She said that kids put it up their nose all the time. They would plug the kids ears and blow in their mouth. So Josh tried it, it just made her scream. The peds nurse was leaving as we were checking in and greeted us warmly. She asked what was up and I explained that one of the twins stuck a little ball up her nose. She said, "There is a trick to that!" I asked if it was the blowing in their mouth trick and she indicated it was. "We tried that to no avail." She laughed and went on her way.

After waiting a while the doctor saw us and quickly got to work using some awesome tweezers. He succeeded in pushing it back further and making her nose bleed. I could tell he was frustrated and didn't know what to do. He said that what we needed was an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor. One that worked for the clinic happens to be in our *ward--although I don't know him well, I do know is wife a little better. Josh mentioned that Dr. Mellor was in our ward and the Doctor seemed to light up. He called him at home and apologized but explained our situation. Luckily the good Dr. was willing to come down on his way to a *High Council meeting. 

Dr. Mellor brought a bunch of specialized tools, and a headlamp. His attempt with the first tool didn't produce the ball. For the second tool, Josh and I had to hold her down while he got this hook that he was able to get behind the ball and pull it out. She bled a little, freaked out a lot but was back to normal in a matter of minutes. 

Let's hope she finally learned her lesson!

4 comments:

  1. Wow!!! I'm so glad none of my kids ever attempted this! Glad she is okay.

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  2. That's happened to us too. With a bead. Luckily my neighbor is a doctor that we know well so she came over with her fancy tools and extracted it. Oh the joys.

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  3. Wow, this makes me glad my kids haven't done this particular stunt. No hair cutting our stuffing things up noses in our house. Hope she has learned her lesson this time. 3rd times the charm right?

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  4. It's all about having the right tools. :)

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