PENNY WOES

It all started Saturday morning when Brooke was in bed with me and ventured out of the bed while I was still trying to wake up. She found 4 pennies that Daddy had left on Mommy's dresser. My groggy self told her to put them back (which I thought she did), and we went into her room to pick out clothes for the day. She went to jump on her bed while I poked around in her dresser only to turn in alarm to her coughing as a penny dropped out of her mouth. Tightly in her toddler hand were only two other pennies. She coughed and gagged a few more times while I perched at her side ready to tip her over and smack her back, but it passed. She cried, and I sighed, thinking thank goodness she swallowed it instead of choking on it.

She was clingy that morning and wasn't interested in eating. It put me on edge, but my sisters came over to play while Mom grocery shopped, so the house was busy and I could keep my mind off of it. At lunch though, she took a bite of pizza and started drooling, gagging and crying. I immediately called the clinic to have the doctor on-call paged (it was the afternoon so the clinic was closed). When the doctor called back about 15 minutes later, Brooke had since sat back down and started eating with no incidence. I explained the whole morning in detail to the doctor, and he said it had most likely been stuck in her esophagus but had perhaps just passed with her eating. The orders were to check her poop and watch her carefully for anymore signs of it being in her esophagus.

The weekend passed uneventfully. Once or twice she coughed when she ate but it was nothing significant enough. Monday night at dinner she told me it hurt her tummy and stopped eating. It sent off my 'mom-dar' but I thought maybe she was just repeating what I had been asking her ALL weekend. I couldn't help but be a little of a spazz; I felt unsettled about the whole situation even though coins are commonly swallowed by children and generally pass without issue. That saying that says 'mom's know' is true...I couldn't pull enough proof together to perhaps worry a doctor, but I know my daughter enough to have taken in her little cues throughout the weekend to know that she wasn't herself.

Long story short, Tuesday morning she refused to eat after two bites of both her breakfast and snack and told me it hurt. There was my proof. We talked to her doctor's nurse who set up an appointment for us that afternoon. She called back 15 minutes later on doctor's orders and told us to head to radiology. The x-rays looked just like the ones above and our day started...

I knew what was coming once we saw the x-rays, but I knew it wasn't life threatening. I called Jimmy at work to inform him but suggested that he try not to worry and stay at work. He agreed. Anyone who knows Jimmy even slightly, knows that Brooke is wrapped around his finger past the point of tightly. At least he knows his limits though. I knew he wanted to be there, as did he, but we both knew that he couldn't handle it. I don't need to get into it...it was a traumatic and long day. She was held down screaming for X-rays, pokes, prods, multiple doctors, nurses, gross liquids with contrast dye, CAT scans and an hour away from Mommy while they put her under and retrieved the penny through her mouth down her throat with a camera and a nifty little pliers at the end of a cord. Let's not even get into the all the annoying and unnecessary hospital workers that were just curious to see what was going on. You can imagine how un-nice I was by the end of the day to anyone who wasn't necessary in the situation, and Brooke started waving and saying 'bye' to anyone that came in her room (that was her way of saying, "get the heck away from me!"). It broke my heart to the core through the whole charade to see her so petrified and to hear her cry more in one day than she has in a year. That being said, the worst part was waiting to hear the results of the CAT scan after the penny removal to determine whether or not her esophagus had been perforated because the doctor had seen some erosion in the lining. Obviously the results showed no damage that couldn't heal itself.

So, it's over now. She can only drink liquids for 24 hrs and then only soft food for awhile. We're grateful our baby girl is okay. You can be guaranteed that all of our change will be up in the cupboard from now on, and that

she will be babied all week.