Peanuts in High Places

This actually happened about four weeks ago but I wanted to write about it because it's funny...sort of. Anyways, one morning I was eating trail mix (it was the only thing that sounded good to me at the time) and Sarah came up and asked me if she could have a peanut. She has had them before and loves them so I handed her some and she ran off to the other room. About five minutes later I hear this sneezing, coughing noise and she came running up to me with teary eyes, pointed to her nose and said, "peanut, peanut." I asked her if she stuck the peanut up her nose and she said yes. I tipped her head back and looked up her nose, sure enough it was stuck up her right nostril and I could see it sitting right there. I went and got a kleenex and tried to have her blow it out but she couldn't blow hard enough. So then I decided to go get the tweasers. The previous week she had folded up one of those stickers they put on oranges and stuck it up her nose. I pulled it out no problem with tweasers so I figured I could do the same with the peanut...wrong! I laid her on the couch and she was wimpering because she didn't want me to touch her nose. I explained to her what I was going to do and she was ok with it. I held her head with one hand and tried to pull it out with the other. She started squirming and I ended up shoving it further up her nose to where I could no longer see it and it made her nose bloody. Luckily I wasn't freaked out, it's not like kids die from peanuts being stuck up their nose but I knew something needed to be done. I called her pediatrician and spoke with a nurse and she told me to go ahead and bring her in.

By this point there was blood dripping out of Sarah's nose onto her upper lip, not a lot but I wanted to clean it up before we went to the doctors. She wouldn't even let me touch her so I put her in the car and on the way to the appointment I explained that we were going to see her doctor so he could pull the peanut out of her nose. All the way there she kept saying, "peanut, nose, doctor." We got into the exam room and the doctor explained to me they pull things out of kids noses all the time. He said it was better for me to bring her in than hope it would come out on its own because if it's left up there for too long it can cause an infection. He took his little light tool and explained to Sarah that he was going to look up her nose. He let her touch it before he looked and she seemed to be ok with it. I held her on my lap as he looked and Sarah did not like this. She started crying again but luckily the doctor could see the peanut. He left the room to get a couple of nurses and some instruments. When they came back in he explained to me that the nurses were going to hold Sarah down on the table while he pulled the peanut out and I was to stay right next to her to talk her through it. He made it clear that he didn't want me to hold her down at all because it was not my job to be the enforcer which made me happy because I didn't want her to see me as one of the "bad guys". So I went to lay her down on the table and she would not let go of me. They had to pry her arms and legs from around me so I could set her down. Then one nurse sort of laid across the lower part of her body and one held her arms and torso. I stood right over her so she could see me and the doctor sat next to her head on the other side. He held her head, stuck the instrument (which was a long, thin metal hook) up her nose, hooked it around the peanut and pulled it out. Sarah screamed the whole time and I tried to tell her they were helping her and I was right there. The whole thing took about 30 seconds and Sarah stopped crying as soon as the peanut was out. When the doctor looked at it he was floored that she managed to get it up her nose in the first place because it was so big, and it was only half a peanut! Sarah was happy as a clam and I thanked the doctors and nurses and we left. All the rest of the day she kept pointing to her nose saying, "nose, peanut, doctor, help."

I had hoped this experience would deter her from sticking things up her nose in the future but as soon as we got home I made a quesadilla for lunch and she tried to stick part of it up her nose. She did the same with dinner and breakfast the next morning. She tried sticking various objects up her nose over the next week and then one day she just stopped trying and hasn't done it since. Every once in a while she will just come up to me and say, "peanut, nose, doctor." I guess it did leave an impression after all.