On Black Friday, Ryan returned home early from work, and we set out on our holiday tradition to set up our Christmas Tree the day after Thanksgiving. Nevermind that I've been celebrating Christmas for almost a month now, that's just a fluke of the snowstorm before Halloween and my desire to rush my due date. We went to our local tree lot, picked a nice full tree and headed home to decorate.
After pulling the Christmas boxes out of the basement, Ryan hung the lights, then the boys helped with the garland and plastic ornaments. On a side note, when I say that some of our ornaments are glass, let me suggest you not slam them together to test that theory. (Ah-hem, Ryan!) But we survived putting up the tree, and it looks great!
Next we pulled out the decorations for the mantle, including a garland of pinecones and dried berries, and this is where the evening goes downhill. Chester must have pulled a few berries off the garland, but I only noticed as he was pulling them back out of his nose. He was also pointing to his nose, telling me "ouchie". Because of a story my friend KH told last week at MOPS, my mind instantly jumped to the conclusion that he had a dried holly berrry up his nose. We pulled out the flashlight and tried to look, but couldn't see anything and I was about to call it a night, but he again pointed to his nose and told me "ouchie."
Thanking God that we have good health insurance (read: no ER co-pay), I called our pediatrician and headed for the ER. The pediatric ER at Salem Hospital got us in, through triage and registration and to a treatment room within 10 minutes of our arrival. The pedicatrician arrived less than an hour later, confirmed a berry was still lodged up his nose, and used a little spray to numb his nose and shrink the nose tissue to give her a bigger path to remove the berry. Then she used this really neat little glowing fiber-optic noose to get behind the berry and pull it back out of his nose. About 90 minutes after our arrival, we were handed discharge papers and headed home. Ater Chester's slip in the kitchen and subsequent stitches this spring, and his weekend ear infections last winter, I'm beginning to think that he's earning a gold level frequent flier card at the Salem Hospital ER.
I should mention that the discharge papers did include tylenol for any discomfort and the instructions to "teach your child not to put things in his/her nose". Thank you, Captain Obvious. My firstborn managed to live to the ripe old age of 3.5 without shoving anything up his nose so far, so I'm not going to be guilted into feeling like a bad mother just because my 21 month old shoved a dried berry up his nose. Some kids are just a little more.... adventuresome than others.
Other than crying while being held down as we looked up his nose, Chester was totally chill through the entire process. He played happily in the treatment room, climbing on the bed, jumping on the painted shapes on the floor and counting the numbers on the IV pole. Chester is my polite little sweetheart, and he thanked the Doctor, even with tears still in his eyes after we had to hold him down and shove a fiber-optic noose up his nose. He enjoyed his popsicle while we waited for his discharge papers, and then ran down the hall yelling "bye-bye, thank you". He even pushed the door-assist button and turned around to wave as he waited patiently for the door to open before making a dash to the exit.
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