Rough day for the Motts

First came my surgical consult to start the ball rolling on getting a breast reduction someday. That actually went fine, although it lasted long enough to make me miss meeting Tom and the kids for...

Nick's pediatric urologist appointment. But honestly I figured it would be the same as before: take a peek, say he's fine, and done. 

Not so much. He's 7, there is no retraction at all. Circumcision will be in October or so. 

When I heard this I was on my way into the office after dropping off my car for inspection (it's a mandatory annual thing here). I ended up so busy at work I didn't have much time to fret about it. 

Came home, the inspection was fine, very nice, and we did the dinner, bath, bedtime thing.

And then Lily told me, "I swallowed a clip."

Holy crap, what?

She was very downcast about it, but stuck to her story. I couldn't understand what she'd swallowed so I asked her to show me another one. Turns out that one of the books in her room had two staples in the spine to hold in the pages. For whatever reason, she pulled one out, put it in her mouth and swallowed it. 

I called Tom upstairs and we questioned her calmly. I took out the other staple and bent it closed, opened, and halfway-opened to see if she could identify how it had looked. She said it looked like this:

Nick was freaking out by now, on the verge of crying, yelling and lecturing Lily, and Gabi for good measure, about swallowing foreign objects. He was pretty sure she was going to die any minute.

I called the pediatrician's office and they paged the doctor. This helped calm Nick a little bit and it seemed like a good idea even though I was sure they'd just tell me I was a worrywart.

The doc said he never had a case like this, where it was an open staple, and to take her to the ER at the children's hospital. 

Super.

I took her and had Tom stay home with the other kids. 

Showing off her bracelet:

After registration and xrays:

And the xray:

You can enlarge it to see the staple towards the right of the picture, in her stomach, in the shape Lily had reported!

The doc was glad it had reached the stomach and is pretty confident it will pass ok from here.

Home again now. We'll report this to the ped tomorrow. 

Now tomorrow is Nick's allergy test. That should be fun!