Wednesday, February 26, 2003|
Why do some kids put things in their nose? Fingers excepted, there doesn't seem to be much purpose to it. But about once a month, we'll get some child who deposited a bead or piece of food or small animal in a nostril. Abigail Rose was one such explorer. Abigail was barely two, as cute and personable a young lady as you would ever hope to meet. Finished with supper and having no other plans for the evening, she inserted a single cooked pea up her nose. She was disappointed to find that it didn't come out as easily as it went in and showed her parents. A number of minutes later, they showed the ED doc. Mostly, I've seen beads in noses or ears. Peas are somewhat less common. Beads are not usually difficult to remove. One of the slickest ways I've seen is to close off the unobstructed nostril, have a parent make a tight seal around the child's mouth and deliver a strong puff of air. This will usually cause the bead to come flying out. The other way is to catch the bead with the working end of a suction tube and slide it out. The kids squirm and cry a little, but it's not very traumatic. The thing with Abigail's pea, however, was that it was cooked prior to insertion. That made it pliable, just slightly gooshy and not amenable to the usual tricks. It couldn't be suctioned, couldn't be grasped and by this time, Abigail was fighting any further attempts. The only thing left to do was sedate her before trying again and that isn't something we do at our little corner ED. So my two year old friend was sent downtown to the children's hospital for a pea extraction. One vegetable plus one little nose will equal a thousand dollars worth of bills. This reminds me, for some reason, of a nurse I used to work with who said that she and her husband never got a divorce because neither one of them wanted custody of the kids.
Peas be with you. |
Last update: 7/12/04; 13:20:57 .
