Saturday, December 13, 2014

Stuff It!

Well, it had to happen sometime...I think we did pretty well making it 3 years & nine months before a visit to Urgent Care...& leave it to my kid to make it for a ridiculous reason! 

I got home from work the other day & my mom let me know Elena was complaining her nose hurt & it was bleeding just a bit. I was thinking she was stuffy from a cold & the blood may be from dryness...but Elena tells me there's something in there. I'm still thinking boogers or something until she says, "No Mommy, a flower!" Wait, what?!?

She explains that it is a flower from a hair elastic. I'm not exactly sure what she means but I'm thinking it's a flower bead. After trying to get Elena to snort it out to no avail, I called the doctor on call but she advised we'd have to go to urgent care. So off we went!

After two hours of waiting (which isn't bad, I guess. They said it was a slow night. I'd hate to see a busy night!) we finally saw the doctor & he attempted to pull it out with tweezers. Elena jumped though & he lost grip & then Elena wouldn't let him try again. 

At this point he advised we could transfer to the hospital & they would be able to sedate Elena so they could get it out. Wait, what?!? Sedate her just to get a bead out of her nose? I felt the risks far outweighed the necessity of that! He said the only other option would be to restrain her & pull it out but that would be very scary for her. 

It made my heart hurt to see Elena so genuinely scared & begging me not to let them do anything to her...but I also knew this would only cause minimal discomfort, not hurt her. I'm not sure how they sedate a kids but I'm guessing it involves needles. So I told Elena I knew she was scared, so so scared, but she'd have to be brave so we could get the flower out of her nose. 

The doctor called over two other nurses & they did what they called a bunny wrap which basically was them wrapping Elena up like a burrito in a blanket. I was able to hold Elena's hand & one nurse immobilized her head & the other restrained her body. Elena was fighting quite hard at this point. Then one nurse asked if she wanted a Popsicle after it was done, Elena relaxed immediately & the doctor pull the flower right out. It turned out to be a foam flower petal from a hair elastic we'd got in the Dominican last year.  Elena was given her Popsicle & no worse the wear except for a bloody nose. 

The doctor then says, "I sure am glad we didn't transfer you to hospital for that." Ya think?!!?!

On the way home I told Elena I hoped she wouldn't ever put anything in her nose again. She said she wouldn't...but then said, just her finger! What a kid!


11 comments:

  1. I'm glad everything turned out alright and you didn't have to get Elena sedated. That's quite a story for a first urgent care visit!

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  2. My daughter did that with a pop corn kernel, they told us in emerg to wait 48 hours to see if it would fall out. If not come back and they would go in for it :/ thankfully it fell out on its own!

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  3. Oh no....I can imagine how scary it must have been for her (and you seeing her so upset!), but you made the right call to just get it done there. The director of Beanie's Montessori was saying that it is almost a rite of passage for a kid to stick something up their nose :-( Glad she is well and was able to tell you what she put up there.

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  4. I love your kid! Having restrained Fiona many times for blood draws, I can assure you it has left no lasting damage!

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  5. Oh sweet Elena. I'm so glad you didn't opt to sedate her! I hope the rest of your weekend was uneventful!!!

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  6. I saw a kid put something up his nose once and it's crazy how quickly it can get lodged up there! Poor thing, I bet she won't do that again! I'm glad the doctor was able to get it out pretty easily though.

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  7. I worked in a pediatric ER for over 4 years. Let me tell you - kids will put all kinds of things into any and every hole they can find!! And just FYI, there are different modes and levels of sedation. There are oral meds they can try, intranasal meds (squirted up the nose, but maybe they wouldn't do that for an object-in-the-nose issue!), a little bit of nitrous (inhaled, like with an oxygen-type mask), and then there's the full sedation which requires an IV and the child is asleep (but not general anesthesia - breathing on their own (no tube), no paralytic). So, just in case you need it in the future - and I hope not - sometimes they can sedate enough for something like this with just an oral or intranasal med, and the nitrous isn't bad at all, either - it's basically laughing gas.

    Glad it all worked out and Elena is no worse for wear!

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  8. Oh boy, rite of passage indeed! "Why did the children put beans in their noses..." Glad it turned out ok!

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  9. Oh boy, what an adventure! Good thing she was able to tell you what it was, or it might have been a long time before you discovered the cause of the problem. Felix has a small and shallow nose so maybe we'll get lucky and skip this rite of passage!

    My friend's kid stuck peas up his nose at daycare recently and they did CPR not to save his life but to blow the peas back out. It worked.

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  10. Yikes. What an ordeal. Thank goodness she's okay. That must have been so hard for you to see her restrained like that.

    I wonder if I could use this as a cautionary tale with my own kiddo, or if it would only give her the idea!

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