A Whole Lot of Excitement That Was No Fun At All

I could have titled this post Ellie Strikes Again, but although accurate, I thought maybe it wouldn't be quite fair...

Yesterday was an exciting day in all the wrong ways in this house. Yesterday afternoon I was just going about my business when Ellie came to me in a complete panic saying 'It's in my throat, it's in my throat.' Adam has a magnetic building set, the kind with sticks and rather large magnetic ballbearings that all click together in wondrous ways to build whatever you want. We identified it as a choking hazard the minute it was given to us, but we thought that Kate would be the one at risk, so he never gets to play with it when Kate is around, and it's kept out of her reach. I'm learning that whatever precautions you take it is usually Never Enough.

So, Ellie is panicking and holding up one of the said magnetic sticks minus it's rather large round magnet. She says it's in her throat. She's quite descriptive, she says she was trying to swallow some spit but she swallowed it by mistake and it hit a bump and is stuck in her throat. She is insistent that it has not gone all the way down into her stomach.

She wasn't coughing or choking at all, and the only reason that I thought that something might have actually happened was that she was clearly scared. So I called the pediatrician's office and they said go to Urgent Care straight away. So I haul all three kids into Urgent Care to be confronted by a doctor who looks at the magnet I am frantically waving under his nose and says that would be hard for an adult to choke down and nurses who are clearly sceptical - 'Did you actually see it?' 'Is there any chance she spit it out again?' 'Did you notice anything on the floor where she was playing?'

She got checked and was totally fine, but just to be sure they sent us off for an abdominal x-ray to see if it had actually made it into her stomach. And there it was. A big, bright, white round spot on the x-ray. Doctor and nurses all suitably impressed. Fortunately for us (and I don't really want to think about how fortunate we are) it went down the right way into her stomach. It went down. She didn't choke. Can't really dwell on this part much...

Ellie was a trooper at the doctor's, my lasting impression is of big worried eyes in a very pale face surrounded by a tangle of hair. She was very, very subdued. Adam was also quite worried, though his worry manifests in a totally different way. He likes his world to be very stable and does not deal well with anything new, so imagine dealing with all of the above to a constant commentary of 'What are they going to do? What's going to happen? Will they have to cut her open? An x-ray? What's an x-ray? This is really cool, I've never seen an x-ray! Can we keep it? Can we have it? Ask him if we can have the sketch, Mum, go on, ask him! I want the sketch! Can I have the sketch? Why can't I have the sketch? Do they have to keep it? Will they keep it forever? What's going to happen?' ... you get the picture.

So the verdict is that if you can swallow it you can pass it. Which means that the next couple of days are going to be NO FUN AT ALL. I don't think I have to explain what this means. Unless I can prove that it is out of her system, then we have to go back for a follow-up x-ray on Saturday or Sunday.

GRIM.