One Year Ago This Week

Once there was a boy named T. He was a pretty adventurous baby and toddler, way more so than his older brother and sister. Much of his exploring involved putting things in his mouth. Now, most babies like to put things in their mouth to check them out, but this kid put everything in his mouth--bits of things he found on the floor (including a small button I later found in his diaper), toilet paper (I had to take rolls off the dispenser and put them on top of the toilet so he couldn't reach them), regular paper, and even books. So many of our books have corners chewed off that it looks like we had a dog.

One day, T and his brother were eating an apple. Usually, I cut apples into slices for my kids, so I'm not sure why they were eating it whole. Maybe I was having a dumb mom day, maybe they got it out of the fridge without me knowing. Anyway, T kind of coughed up a few tiny apple leaves (because you should never waste any part of the apple), and I thought, "This kid's crazy. I'm glad we got it up, though."

Not so fast. After that happened, he sounded just a little bit wheezy when he breathed. Nothing bad, and it certainly didn't deter him from his usual running, jumping, and causing mayhem. We thought maybe he had just scratched his throat when he tried to swallow the apple leaves. So, we ignored any parental instinct that something more might be wrong, and just "kept an eye on him."

That was on Thursday. The wheezing continued over the weekend, and we started worrying about it more. Finally, we took the kid into the doctor on Monday. Doctor listened to him breathe and said he thought something might still be stuck in there. Awesome. We took him to the local hospital for x-rays (he did not enjoy that, of course) but they really couldn't see anything. Went home to wait. Doctor called us at home on Tuesday and said he wanted us to go up to the children's hospital an hour away. We dropped the other kids off at my in-laws and took off with T. The doc had supposedly called ahead for us so we thought we'd get in right away. Not really. We checked in at the ER and waited. And waited. Meanwhile, thinking they might have to do a procedure that night, we didn't let T eat or drink. We chased him around the waiting room for about two hours, and then we finally saw the triage nurse. She listened to his chest and said, "Yep, I think there's something still down there." Thank you for that expert assessment.
More waiting, and then we got into see the pediatrician. More listening and more x-rays. Then finally around 8 pm, a decision was made to do a bronchoscopy. The apple core was blocking his right lung and so the kid was pretty much only breathing from one side. For it, they'd have to put him under and send a scope down his throat to get the apple core out. There were a few kids in front of him so we waited. For having not eaten in several hours and being tired out of his mind, T was in surprisingly good spirits. We watched a cartoon or two and took him on walks.

Finally, around 10 or 10:30 pm, they prepped him for surgery, even putting the IV in his left arm, so he could still suck on his right fingers. The procedure itself only took about 20 minutes. When it was over, the surgeon told us they'd found the apple core piece (and even gave it to us in a handy container!) and quite a bit of infection (as a result of the stupid parents waiting around for days after the incident).Since it was late at night, we had to stay there. When he came out of the anesthesia, he was all groggy and started yelling. And screaming. Nothing we did could calm him down. Nothing. He screamed for probably 1 1/2 hours (mind you--it's almost 1 am by now and there are very sick children on the same floor, trying to sleep--nice.) Finally, some genius nurse found a super-cool straw, put it in a juice box, and handed it to T. He immediately stopped crying and started drinking. A and I collapsed in a heap next to him.

We took him home the next morning and he's been completely fine ever since. No ill effects from the ill-fated apple eating, or his not-so-bright parents waiting to take action. What a crazy experience. What a crazy kid.