Operation Raisin Extraction

Her fingers are not the only things L. has been sticking up her nose lately. She has also been stuffing carrots, watermelon, 'cheese' and even raisins. Until yesterday, we were able to successfully remove any and every foreign object on our own. It helps that she hasn't stuffed anything so far up that we didn't have a 'tail' hanging down for extraction purposes and that she sneezes most things out.

Breakfast yesterday was quite eventful as she kept putting raisins up her nose. Bad mommy turned her back for a second and turned back just in time to interrupt L.'s intense effort yet again shove a raisin up her left nostril. When I got that raisin (and all the others on her tray) away from her, I realized the first raisin she jammed up her nose was still there.

Mr. W. and I worked at getting the raisin out for a minute but only succeeded in jamming it further up. Fortunately, our clinic is open Saturday mornings and had plenty of appointments available with the on-duty pediatrician.

Dr. M. (who looked 15), bless her, did not laugh at us. She did have me blow hard into L.'s mouth to try to force out the raisin. It was really odd trying to give a wriggly worm mouth to mouth. One hopes it is easier to get a good seal when the patient is lying still and not crying when needing to administer CPR. My mouth-to-mouth attempts succeeded in getting L. and me both covered in sloppy drool (yuck!) and knocked the raisin far enough down that the good doctor was able to actually see it (so she quit asking if I was SURE there was a raisin up there).

When the mouth-to-mouth failed to do the trick, out came the torture tool chest. My poor baby had a speculum-type thingy wedged in her nostril while vicious, alien-abduction type probes were stuffed up her nose. After 30 minutes of digging around and pulling out little bits and pieces of raisin while L. screamed non-stop at the top of her lungs, Dr. M. was ready to give up. She said she's give it one last go, and 'poof' we had the rest of the raisin.

I was so relieved, I shouted 'halleluia' right there in the examining room. Dr. M. gave me instructions to dose L. with saline drops up her nose, but I decided the poor child had enough trauma and skipped those instructions. The doctor did a great job, not only was the raisin pulled out, but L.'s nose did not bleed at all afterward. I expected things to be scraped up and possibly bloody, but no.

After all that trauma, L. fell asleep and stayed sacked out for over 2 hours. When she woke up, I had rather hoped she would be cured of nose stuffing. During lunch, I saw a little piece of cheese dangling from the right nostril. When I pulled away the cheese, a carrot stick came with it. (((BIG SIGH))).

M.W.