Nose picking on other people

August 29, 2006

I had to do my first nasal extraction today. I'm not talking about the stuff you get out of your baby's nose with the big, blue or green bulbous snot-sucker that makes the baby scream for 10 minutes.

No, no, no, no, no. I am talking about something shoved up the nose.
Yep. Reece stuck a piece of paper up his left nostril this afternoon. Actually, it was a size tag that I had torn off of Alicia's belt this morning, so it wasn't even like normal paper that would have gotten all soft and mushy and probably leaked out on its own.

I know. I need to throw things away. We were running late. Sheesh!

I didn't realize he had done it until he came to me with his finger in his nose and crying about something up in there. Naturally, I thought that he had some normal booger action going on. I got a tissue and had him blow. Nothing. He started to panic. Then he said, "Mama. There's paper in my nose." I had him lean his head back and I couldn't see anything in his nose. Great. I knew instantly just what piece of paper he was referring to as well.

I called Mike out frantically. He, of course, was taking his time because he had just gotten out of the shower and didn't want to go to work so he was dragging his heels a bit. I yelled the next time and told him to move it (I can be bossy like that. Are you surprised?). We decided that blowing the nose wasn't working so well, so we tilted him back and I could just barely see the very tip of the corner of this piece of paper, up there in his nose.

I grabbed a blanket, had Mike papoose-wrap our poor child and then I sat on his legs. Mike held his head still and I took some very pointed tweezers and - voila! - out came the tag, all one and a half inches length of it, saving us $50 in ER visit co-pays and a traumatized child.

Of course, this was mere minutes before I had to leave to pick Ali up from school (doesn't it always happen that way?), so after I picked her up I took both kids out for clown ice cream cones, since Reece was still pretty upset. He has now forgotten all about the pain and promised to never stick anything in his nose again.