This past Friday was a PD day, so the lils were hanging out at home with me.  We had a lazy day planned and were getting ready to run out for groceries followed by a trip to Mud Lake when Goose came running into the kitchen complaining about her vitamin.  I had given her a gummy multi-vitamin a few minutes prior, and assumed that she had lost it.  Goose LOVES the vitamins, and she is constantly playing with them, trying to slow down the eating process.

When I asked if it was lost, she nodded.  I admit that I was frustrated at this point, I frequently need to reinforce the need to just EAT the vitamin and not play with it, but this time I had forgotten.  She nodded in answer to my question, and then I noted that she was tearing up.  When she pointed to her nose and said “it hurts”, I knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy fix.  Using the sun as my flashlight, I laid her down on the counter and looked up her nostril.  Way up her nostril, in fact.  I could see nothing, but noted that it was bleeding.

I sat her up and asked the questions every parent is dying to ask: are you sure it is up your nose; how big was it when it went up your nose; and just how far did you push it up your nose…  She filled me in and kept complaining about it hurting, so I tried to help her get it out naturally.

Not sure how gummy this gummy was, I tried to encourage her to blow her nose. This is when Goose confirmed for me that at some point over the summer she forgot how to blow her nose! After several attempts, I made the decision to call Tele-Health, despite the fact that I knew they were just going to tell me to go to the hospital.  After a short conversation that included my confession that I had smelled my daughter’s mucous and that it did indeed smell like an orange multi-vitamin, they told me to go to the ER, just in case.

At the hospital, we were checked in lightning fast, and were herded here:

 It comforted me somewhat to know that there was a room for cases like ours, but I still could not wrap my head around the fact that she has done this in the first place.  I was certain that we were past the age where things got jammed up noses.  Well, jammed up one’s own nose. 

Up until this point, Goose had been sniffling quite regularly, but I noticed then that she had stopped.  She just finished telling me that it didn’t hurt any more when the doctor walked in the door.  He gave her a quick examination and confirmed that the “foreign body” was no longer in her nasal passage and decreed that she was fine.  She proved it by hopping off the bed and skipping out the door.

Happy that she was pain free and that we were so fast, we carried on with our day. She delighted in showing me MANY times that her nostril now stuck together, but was otherwise seemingly unscathed. We both learned a lesson on Friday.  She knows that you don’t get a second vitamin if you “lose” your first in your nose, and I know that I can never, ever give her another gummy vitamin without adequate supervision.