Did You Just Put Something in Your Nose?

Not the question you want to be asking when you have only been home for 30 minutes.

I got home about 15 minutes late tonight after sitting in traffic, probably because it started to rain again. When I walked in Blanca told me that she had already feed the kids. WE LOVE BLANCA! She also told me that the kids hadn’t taken a nap so they were pretty tired. When I came in they were watching a Rugrats video and seemed pretty content.

Blanca left and I made myself a little dinner, I was starving. To keep it simple I just nuked some leftover whole wheat pasta and homemade veggie sauce. I went in to join the boys and of course Dylan wanted to taste my dinner. He didn’t like it and returned the food to me. As I was dealing with the returned food, I thought I noticed something black on his face. The next thing I knew, Dylan put “it” in his nose. Neither Dylan nor Sam had ever put anything in their noses, except of course their fingers, which seem to spend an exceptional amount of time in their noses.

At this point I said, did you just put something in your nose? I must have scared him a bit because when I ran to him to check and get him to blow his nose, he freaked a bit and that was the beginning of our evening’s adventure. I ran to get a Klennex to get Dylan to blow his nose but he was scared and kept sniffling in, not blowing out. At this point I am FREAKING OUT. I have visions of crayon in his brain. That’s what I thought he put in his nose, the tip of a black crayon, more on that later.

Now remember, I have only been home for about 30 minutes and I’m running around the house. I try to call my parents (both doctors) but I can’t get through. I’m not sure if I’m overreacting but I decide to call our doctor’s after hours line. I sit on hold and then a nurse comes on and starts asking me all the questions I had just answered for the answering service. Finally I interrupt her and ask if I should take Dylan to the emergency room. She says yes and then tells me to wait for a doctor to call me back. I said frantically, do I sit at home waiting for the doctor to call, while a crayon creeps into my son’s brain or do I go to the hospital. She said go to the hospital.

While all this is going on I have changed my clothes, packed a bag of goodies for the boys (food, water, snacks, toys and books) and changed them in to their PJs. Did I mention that Mark is out of town tonight?

Anyway, Dylan is bawling because I let it slip that we were heading to the hospital. I yelled at Sam because we couldn’t find one of his shoes and he’s crying and I’m freaking out with visions of the crayon in Dylan’s brain.

We all get in the van and I race to Alexandria Inova Hospital, the hospital where the kids were born. Not a fan of the hospital but I thought they could handle the crayon extraction.

Sam was trying to comfort Dylan which was very cute.

We get to the hospital and sit in chairs for a while. Actually things moved pretty quickly and there is nothing really exciting to tell about the time in the waiting room so I’ll move on to the exam room.

Christine come in to talk to us, I’m not sure if she was a nurse or a doctor, she just introduced herself at Christine. She had a nose ring, was wearing hot pink scrubs and her bellybutton was showing when she first walked in. Anyway she was very nice and asked what was going on. I explained the situation and she looked up Dylan’s nose (he was crying again – can’t blame him). She said she saw the object and asked Dylan to blow his nose. I told her I had tried that with no success. Now I must admit I was relieved that there was something in Dylan’s nose. Not happy that something was up his nose but happy that my mothering instincts were correct.

Christine left and came back with another guy. They had to wrap Dylan in a contraction called a papoose. The Papoose immobilizes him, he was screaming and no one was happy with the situation. Christine tried to get the “crayon tip” out with pinchy things while Dylan was crying, screaming and thrashing about. It was very unpleasant. Then they tried suction. Finally, the second try with the pinchy things worked and out popped a small piece of black plastic that must have been part of some toy.

Dylan, Sam and I were quite traumatized so after paying our $75 for the emergency room visit we headed to Maggie Moos where the boys had some ice cream. I tried to make this a learning experience by asking the boys what they learned and having them repeat, “we don’t put anything in our noses. We’ll see if that sticks.

We were home by 9:15 and they were in bed and sleeping by 9:35.

So that was my night. What did you do?