About three and a half hours ago, my daughter came up to me and said her tummy hurt. I said, “Oh, your tummy hurts?” Then she said “penny hurts.” I said “Penny?” Uh oh. I looked at her and asked her as nicely and calmly as I could, “honey, did you eat a penny? Is there a penny in your tummy?” She said yes.
She was acting okay, so I wasn’t sure if I should be worried or not. I told my husband, and he asked her the same question, and she said yes again. Neither of us actually saw her saw her swallow a penny, so we weren’t exactly sure what to do. My husband called pediatric emergency, and they said to bring her in, so they could see if a) she actually did swallow anything that was not food and b)if she did, they could make sure it wasn’t blocking anything.
So, my husband took her to the hospital. She was pretty excited about getting to go somewhere with Daddy. I wanted to go, but my husband thought it would be easier and faster if he just went up there, and I stayed home with the baby. That was three hours ago. I haven’t heard anything from him yet. He’s got our cellphone, and the instructions on how to use it (we’ve only had it a couple of weeks), but he hasn’t called. He’s supposed to play tonight, too. I called the bar where he’s supposed to play, and informed them of the situation. The band can get by without him.
I’m starting to get nervous. The hospital he went to is one of the busier ones here, so it’s possible that he’s still in the freaking waiting room. I just don’t know.
This is my equivalent of pacing back & forth. Thanks for letting me wear a hole in this carpet.
Don’t worry Cristi, hospitals are the only businesses left that don’t treat you online or thru a drive through (yet).Since your daugther is not bleeding out the eyes or comatose, she’s probably last on the list of people in the ER to see because she’s so happy to be having quality time with Daddy. Daddy, btw, probably forget to turn the car phone on or the battery died.
You’re daughter will be fine. If she did swallow a penny, better buy a box of surgical gloves and be prepared to look for old abe in her poop until it passes. When she does, I say wash it off and save it for her when she has a child of her own :)(Along with the hospital bill)
Also, none of our local hospitals let you use cell phones inside. It could be that he can’t use the phone in there and doesn’t want to leave her alone to go outside (possibly missing being called in).
Call the hospital and they’ll page him. Don’t sweat it! She’ll be OK I swallowed ALL sorts of weird stuff when I was a kid. Everything “came out OK”
Zette
Love is like popsicles…you get too much you get too high.
She’ll be okay, honest. I spent a few mad, lost hours in the emergency room two weeks ago, and they aren’t speedy. (Well, they are, but they take serious problems first, as well they should.)
Waiting is hell, but it takes time to see her, trek down to the pharmacy if needed, etc. Hey, if it were serious you know your husband would have called by now.
It’ll be okay. Just hang in, stay calm and pretty soon you’ll have them both back home.
Thanks, folks. They did just get home, about half an hour ago. Tim (my husband) tried to call, but apparently, you have to dial 1 + area code from the hospital. I tried to call out home phone from my living room after he got home, and I guess I have to dial 1 from that, too.
It did take forever at the hospital, and she did swallow a penny. But they said she was fine, and it would pass. She came home talking about the “biiiiig camera” that took a picture of her tummy. Her daddy told her to say “cheese!” when they did the X-ray, and they showed her the X-ray when they were done. She thought that was very cool.
Since she’s okay, and I hate to waste a perfectly good thread, I’d like to hear some stories about similar incidents from everyone. My mom had me cracking up a while ago, telling me about how while I never swallowed anything weird, my younger brother stuck a bean up his nose once. Didn’t require surgery to get it out, but he looked pretty funny with a bean hanging from his nostril.
Ok, the Xray is to ascertain the position of the foreign body, as we call it in the biz. If it’s in the gut they send you home and tell ya to check her poop for a few days and if you don’t find it, come back for a follow up Xray to make sure it’s gone. Occasionally they wind up in the wind pipe, you’d know immediately, or stuck in the esophogaus. That last is the tricky one, as the possibility exists that it might migrate up and over to the wind pipe. Rare? Probably. Dangerous? You bet. They can usually extract these under consious sedation; close to surgical anethesia, but short acting. A little narcotic, a little versed or propofol, and a ~ 500.00$ insturment that looks remarkably like one of the pincer tools in anymans garage, and you’re done.
Larry
When I was three, I stuck one of those little “ball” chains in my ear canal. After awhile, I had an ear infection, went to the doctor, and he managed to extract it. No one could figure out how I managed to get it in there. I guess when we’re little, anything seems possible.
Glad it turned out OK, Cristi. Sounds like your daughter had some adventure in it too !
My sister will kill me for this…you have to know her; she’s the most easy going, warmest hearted person living.
So, she finally goes to the dentist; needs a filling and (this is very “her”) decides to have a gold filling put it. The dentist cranks her back in the chair, jaws agape and gullet wide–and then drops the gold filling dead center down her throat.
My sister swallows instantly by reflex and the gold is, well, if not gone, at least seriously out of reach. Sis, the sweetie, agrees to “keep an eye out” for the gold, because after all, she really likes her dentist…
(I will draw a tactful curtain over her accounts of strainers, etc…)
Alas, the gold was never recovered. (Though she said she really didn’t want it reinstalled in her tooth anyway, all things considered.) The dentist supplied a new filling and my sister refers to her plumbing as “Sutter’s Mill on the Ohio”.
My son had a fascination with sticking things in his nose for a while, but they were normally large enough that they just stuck in the opening. One day, he was playing with the pieces of a big foam puzzle that I had gotten for him the day before, and I happened to glance at him when he had a small part in his hand, and then glance a few moments later, when he did not. I checked out his nose, and sure enough … I tried to take care of it at home, but there was no way I could hold his head straight and operate tweezers (it was still visible, and I could have gotten it out if he held perfectly still, which 2-year-olds are not famous for doing on their own). In the end, we had to go to our doctor’s home to have it extracted. My son cried when it was being done, but the two gummibears he got from the doctor took care of any mental scars.
A week later, he stuck something like a little Colorforms piece up his nose, but it wasn’t very far back. I gave him some pepper to sniff, and he sneezed it right out!
When I was about 5, my mom noticed a funny smell coming from my nose and mouth. It wasn’t a bad breath smell, but a moldy one. It didn’t go away after a couple of days so she took me to the doctor. It turned out I had been stuffing small pieces of foam from a stuffed animal up my nose… I think I had about ten pieces up there.
The doctor told her that I wasn’t the worst case he’d seen. He had a little boy come in who had bean sprouts in the back of his throat from a bean he’d stuck way up in his nose.
When I went to work today, I of course told all my friends. Most of them have children, some my daughter’s age, some older. The general reaction was “dang, she’s almost three! What took her so long!”
I like the bank joke too. I’m wondering maybe if I pull on her arm a few times, I’ll hit a jackpot…
Whilst working at a family practice clinic in the Navy, had a kid come in with a funny smell coming from his ear (of all places). Turns out he had stuck a 1/2 popped popcorn kernal in his ear 1 week or so before and it started to get STANKY!!
Also, had lady come in at night (while I was on duty) who had gone into one of the beach bathrooms and a moth had flown into her ear. It was still alive and kept beating it’s wings against her eardrum. I tried to drown it with some sterile water and then pull it out, but no luck. I had to send her up to the Naval Hospital ER. She later told me it took the doctor about an hour to get the little bugger out (in pieces-eeeeewwwww!).
I swallowed ALL sorts of weird stuff when I was a kid. Everything “came out OK”