DON'T put things up your NOSE!!

When my son Derek was about 2 yrs old we had an adventure of the icky sorts. Somehow he had proceeded to get stuck up his nostril a small hard foreign object. My husband and I tried and tried to get it out on our own. We thought, hey we are both nurses we should be able to do this. But no matter how hard we tried we couldn't budge the little sucker. It was a very hard and non-pliable object. So after many, many tries and many different techniques we decided we needed help. We took him to his pediatrician who also tried to get it out but she was also unsuccessful. She recommended we see an ENT (Ear/Nose/Throat Doc). So we headed up north about an hour to the ENT who had placed Derek's ear tubes. He also tried but couldn't get it out, he recommended sedation to do it. Yikes! As a nurse I know about that kind of stuff but when it is your 2 yr old who also has a heart condition, that's a little scary. However we didn't really have another choice at this point unless we wanted to have a foreign object permanently up our sons nostril! So after some sedation medicine Derek was finally relaxed enough that the doctor was able to pull the little sucker out! It was a little funny after the deed was done because the medicine made Derek a little goofy! It was good to be able to laugh a little at this point.

So why am I telling you this story now...? Because of this...

As I was sitting on our front porch last evening enjoying the post-rain cool air my precious son comes outside and says to me in a slightly worried voice...

"Mommy, I got a bullet stuck up my nose."

"You got a WHAT stuck up your nose?"

"A bullet."

I had immediate flashbacks to the story above and began to panic! And of course my husband was not at home to help this time!

I'm thinking. "Oh great, not again."

I proceeded to tell myself to calm down. I tilted his head back and sure enough, there in his right nostril was a small little orange rubber bullet from his older brothers toy gun.

I took him to my bedroom and laid him on the bed and went looking for the tweezers! I started to panic again when I couldn't find the tweezers, but before I had too much time to get worked up I found them in the top drawer in our bathroom.

I went to the bed where my normally rambunctious-can't ever sit still-tons of energy son was lying very still. I told him to tilt his head back and I began trying to use the tweezers to get it out. But as with the last time I just couldn't get a good grip on it. I was picturing in my head another visit to the doctor and sedation and...agghh. It seemed all my attempts to pull it out only pushed it further up his nostril.

I stopped and thought for a moment and said a quick prayer. At this point my son was still being very quiet and still but there was a little tear running down from his right eye. Poor guy, I tried again as gentle as possible, still no luck. Just when I was about to give up and wait for his dad to get home and try I had a sudden moment of brilliance.

I told him to "blow really hard", after a few attempts at this the little sucker popped right out. Thank God. Derek recovered quickly and was pretty proud of himself.

"Mommy, I blew it out!"

If only this would have worked when he was two!

So the moral of the story?? DON'T PUT THINGS UP YOUR NOSE!!!!!!

P.S. If you are curious about the first foreign object, we discovered later that it was a tiny hard rubber piece that our puppy had bitten off of one of her toys and Derek must have found it on the ground. And of course HE thought, "hmm, this looks like it would fit nicely up here"! :-)