I Know An Old Lady

who swallowed a fly...I dunno why she swallowed a fly...perhaps she'll die.

I have a young son...who swallowed a quarter...I dunno why he swallowed a quarter...perhaps he'll die.

Have you ever dug into your child's feces with a single chopstick in an effort to double check that the foreign object they swallowed "passed"? I can now say, I have.

Last night at 6:30, just as I was tidying up the dinner dishes, Sumner slumped into the kitchen and asked for a glass of water. After taking a sip he admitted he had just swallowed a quarter.

"And how did that quarter happen to be in your mouth?" I asked.

"I was playing with it. In my mouth."

Annoyed and worried, I called Phil and the Children's Hospital ED and my pediatrician’s help line. They all concurred: take him in.

Now I don't want to sound heartless, but I did not want to take him in. Sumner woke up that very morning at 4:15AM, early even for him. The weekend before I was in DC staying up too late acting like it was Phoenix 1997. Monday I tried to recuperate. Tuesday I turned in a paper and had a late-ish night out with the kids (9PM) for a Parent Council Meeting while Phil was on call. I was so looking forward to children in bed and asleep at 7PM and an hour or so to myself before Phil came home. And now this.

Well, he wasn't having trouble breathing, so I made the kids take their meds, clean their toys up, and brush their teeth. Ramona got in PJs and Sumner changed into pants he could sleep in and we took off, in the rain, for the hospital. Phil met us there and took Ramona home while Sumner and I registered.

We were there for about 4 hours. Here are some of the highlights:

• Coloring on Xeroxed sheets of Sponge Bob and Pooh Bear and other such nonsense with some of the other children in the waiting room and then turning over a Scooby Doo sheet and free styling a couple colorful designs and drawings. That got every child at the coloring table's attention. Why don't places like that stick with blank paper?
• Watching Sumner get a little scared and mainly thrilled by a made-for-TV kid's Disney movie: his hand was over his mouth as he said, "My heart is beating so fast."
• Exposing him to the original "Parent Trap" when we finally got a room and borrowed a video from the ED video shelf. Sumner's reaction, "They're sisters."
• Watching the nurses get a kick out of Sumner, who loves to have his blood pressure taken and oxygen tested, "I just love things that squeeze something on me and show numbers about me."
• Hearing him explain to one of these nurses that he doesn't like needles and needing reassurance that he won't need to have one poke him. I said, "Let's not worrying about that right now." He said, "I am not so good at putting away worry."
• While he was getting his chest x-rayed, he smiled for the camera--really big and cheesy. Later, after we saw the film, he told me, "I thought I was going to be able to see my face and the face on the quarter."

The film proved that the quarter was not in his lung or esophagus. By 10:30PM it was already in his stomach. While we were waiting for a cab, I lectured him about how ridiculous this whole situation was and told him to lay off the quarters. “Don’t put things in your mouth ever again.” He smiled at me and said, “Even food?” We were home by 11 and his was asleep about 2 minutes later.

In therapy I have learned to be able to say: a lot of crazy and often difficult things have happened to me in the last seven years. Now it is October 2005. Hurricane. Retina. Quarters. What next?

Two final thoughts: 1. My brother swallowed a nickel in seventh grade, never told anyone, and is still worried that it is inside of him doing damage. So, I am going to be digging in more poop so that this doesn't haunt Sumner at age 25. 2. My brother also shoved a hot tamale up his nose once. They rushed him to the ED, but it had dissolved there and stung like crazy. 3. The quarter was a New Hampshire quarter.

This is that most blog like blog I have blogged.