So I promised I would post the details of my "What Makes a Good Day Bad" post...
I must lead off with "What Makes a Bad Day Good?" That would be the fact that my child survived what could have been an accident with a much different ending. So now for the story...
"Fiesty Girl" was scheduled for a follow-up appointment with her doctor in Iowa City on Monday. We have family in Forest City, so we arranged to stop off at their place for breakfast Sunday morning. We had been visiting a little over an hour when two of the boys, my son being one of them, came trekking downstairs at a rather quick pace. My son was in tow with a look of sheer terror in his eyes, tears streaming down his face, and not speaking when we asked him what was wrong. Moments later we were told that "Little Man" had swallowed a quarter while the two boys were playing upstairs.
Mind you, my son is nearly six years old and has never been one to put things in his mouth that don't belong there...until about a month ago. Since then we are consistently telling him to take things out of his mouth. Here, before my very eyes, my worst nightmare was coming true.
We finally got our son to speak and he said that the quarter was stuck in his throat and really hurt. The crying continued, his face was pale, and we jumped in the van thinking we would hit the interstate and get to the nearest hospital (35 minutes away) as soon as possible. Our plans changed just minutes into our drive when "Little Man" started gagging, drooling some sort of thick mucus, and staring off into space with a zombie-sort-of-look on his face. My husband told me to pull over immediately and his cousin's husband (who was leading us to the hospital) called 911 for us.
The ambulance arrived and off went my son with his father, racing down the road. I followed and we arrived at the hospital a short time later. My husband called me from the ambulance and about five minutes out from arriving at the hospital told me that our son had just said "I feel better, I think it's in my tummy now." That was good news, but I was still scared to death.
We arrived at the hospital in Mason City and they immediately took "Little Man" into the ER and started monitoring his breathing, heartrate, oxygen level, etc. When they knew that was stable they took him down to another part of the hospital for x-rays.
Low and behold -- there, sitting in his stomach, was that darn quarter! It had indeed passed through his throat into his stomach. He was discharged about 3+ hours later and we were told to "monitor" for the quarter, which should appear in 1-3 days.
Well here we are, 4 days later and still no quarter. Our local family physician now wants to see him to further evaluate what is going on, so we will be making an afternoon visit to the clinic tomorrow. We are hoping that maybe we just "missed" the quarter somehow. I guess we'll know more tomorrow.
And last, but not least, thanks to our family (you know who you are!) for making the drive to the hospital to watch "Fiesty Girl" so that we could tend to "Little Man." Even though our visit was short we enjoyed our time together and we will have to do it again...but maybe a little longer and under less-stressing circumstances next time!!
I must lead off with "What Makes a Bad Day Good?" That would be the fact that my child survived what could have been an accident with a much different ending. So now for the story...
"Fiesty Girl" was scheduled for a follow-up appointment with her doctor in Iowa City on Monday. We have family in Forest City, so we arranged to stop off at their place for breakfast Sunday morning. We had been visiting a little over an hour when two of the boys, my son being one of them, came trekking downstairs at a rather quick pace. My son was in tow with a look of sheer terror in his eyes, tears streaming down his face, and not speaking when we asked him what was wrong. Moments later we were told that "Little Man" had swallowed a quarter while the two boys were playing upstairs.
Mind you, my son is nearly six years old and has never been one to put things in his mouth that don't belong there...until about a month ago. Since then we are consistently telling him to take things out of his mouth. Here, before my very eyes, my worst nightmare was coming true.
We finally got our son to speak and he said that the quarter was stuck in his throat and really hurt. The crying continued, his face was pale, and we jumped in the van thinking we would hit the interstate and get to the nearest hospital (35 minutes away) as soon as possible. Our plans changed just minutes into our drive when "Little Man" started gagging, drooling some sort of thick mucus, and staring off into space with a zombie-sort-of-look on his face. My husband told me to pull over immediately and his cousin's husband (who was leading us to the hospital) called 911 for us.
The ambulance arrived and off went my son with his father, racing down the road. I followed and we arrived at the hospital a short time later. My husband called me from the ambulance and about five minutes out from arriving at the hospital told me that our son had just said "I feel better, I think it's in my tummy now." That was good news, but I was still scared to death.
We arrived at the hospital in Mason City and they immediately took "Little Man" into the ER and started monitoring his breathing, heartrate, oxygen level, etc. When they knew that was stable they took him down to another part of the hospital for x-rays.
Low and behold -- there, sitting in his stomach, was that darn quarter! It had indeed passed through his throat into his stomach. He was discharged about 3+ hours later and we were told to "monitor" for the quarter, which should appear in 1-3 days.
Well here we are, 4 days later and still no quarter. Our local family physician now wants to see him to further evaluate what is going on, so we will be making an afternoon visit to the clinic tomorrow. We are hoping that maybe we just "missed" the quarter somehow. I guess we'll know more tomorrow.
And last, but not least, thanks to our family (you know who you are!) for making the drive to the hospital to watch "Fiesty Girl" so that we could tend to "Little Man." Even though our visit was short we enjoyed our time together and we will have to do it again...but maybe a little longer and under less-stressing circumstances next time!!
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