The Bead

We had a moment of excitement yesterday. Stella came up to me whining about her nose. I thought her runny nose was bothering her, so I wiped it and went back to whatever I was doing. A couple seconds later, Heidi (a bit more "with it" than me) came rushing up to me with Stella and said: "Stella put a bead up her nose!" I'm not even sure how Heidi could see it. It was WAY up there, almost out of sight.

Now at this point most parents would probably realize the foolishness of trying to get something out their kid's nose and rather than take the risk of pushing the foreign object farther up, would take their toddler to the emergency room. Not us. We're kind of burned out on ER visits and the financial kick in the pants we've gotten lately.

So I told Heidi (my nurse) to get the tweezers. She put Stella in some sort of immobilizing, wrestling hold. Then with flashlight in one hand and tweezers in the other, I probed into the far reaches of Stella's right nostril. She cried and contorted and tried to flop like a fish out of water. Thankfully, nurse Heidi's vise-like hold enabled me to skillfully grasp the bead and pull it of the dark cave. With the snotty bead out, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Sometimes kids put things where they don't belong.