There's a penny on the floor and it stays...
Unless you are a five-year-old boy living at my house.
In that case, if there is a penny on the floor you will pick it up and put it in your mouth. And choke.
And then your mother, once establishing that you can breathe and speak, will rush you into the car and to the nearest, albeit good-for-nothing-more-than-stitches-and-broken-bones, hospital. On the theory that if it is in his trachea and it moves, she needs to 1.not get lost, and 2. be able to tell 911 where you are. Local hospital personnel moved very very slowly when confronted with a woman rushing in asking her kid, "Can you still breathe? Can you still feel it in your throat?"
But they were able to take an x-ray. I so wish I had the x-ray to post. Picture the typical neck/chest x-ray film, with a big fat round coin in the esophagus across the collarbone. The ER doc shows us the lovely film, and shows us that it's definitely not in his trachea and that he's getting air, which calms mother's near panic. For just a moment. Until he says, "We don't have an ear, nose, and throat, or GI doc. I'm going to call Children's and see if they want you to go home or take him in in the morning, or what."
Go home? Go home? In what world is it an option to take a kid home with a coin plugging his esophagus?
Luckily, the Children's doc wanted to see him and get another film. Dad takes him off to Children's; I take the bigger boy home. They get x-rays at eleven and again early the next morning. That sucker wasn't moving.
So, they must sedate the child and go in and remove the penny.
This is the view from the eighth floor of the new Children's. What a lovely hospital. Such a lovely hospital that for the first half hour, all I could think was wow, this is so nice, wow, this is going to cost a freakin' fortune. So then the pediatrician comes in on rounds.
"Why do you think it's a penny?"
"Because he said it was a penny?"
"Oh, because usually anything smaller than a quarter they can swallow and pass."
She also said that they find once a kid does this, they are more likely to do it again. Happy happy. Joy joy.
Yep. It's a penny.
In that case, if there is a penny on the floor you will pick it up and put it in your mouth. And choke.
And then your mother, once establishing that you can breathe and speak, will rush you into the car and to the nearest, albeit good-for-nothing-more-than-stitches-and-broken-bones, hospital. On the theory that if it is in his trachea and it moves, she needs to 1.not get lost, and 2. be able to tell 911 where you are. Local hospital personnel moved very very slowly when confronted with a woman rushing in asking her kid, "Can you still breathe? Can you still feel it in your throat?"
But they were able to take an x-ray. I so wish I had the x-ray to post. Picture the typical neck/chest x-ray film, with a big fat round coin in the esophagus across the collarbone. The ER doc shows us the lovely film, and shows us that it's definitely not in his trachea and that he's getting air, which calms mother's near panic. For just a moment. Until he says, "We don't have an ear, nose, and throat, or GI doc. I'm going to call Children's and see if they want you to go home or take him in in the morning, or what."
Go home? Go home? In what world is it an option to take a kid home with a coin plugging his esophagus?
Luckily, the Children's doc wanted to see him and get another film. Dad takes him off to Children's; I take the bigger boy home. They get x-rays at eleven and again early the next morning. That sucker wasn't moving.
So, they must sedate the child and go in and remove the penny.
This is the view from the eighth floor of the new Children's. What a lovely hospital. Such a lovely hospital that for the first half hour, all I could think was wow, this is so nice, wow, this is going to cost a freakin' fortune. So then the pediatrician comes in on rounds.
"Why do you think it's a penny?"
"Because he said it was a penny?"
"Oh, because usually anything smaller than a quarter they can swallow and pass."
She also said that they find once a kid does this, they are more likely to do it again. Happy happy. Joy joy.
Yep. It's a penny.
posted by Momma Star at 6:13 PM
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