A nose for trouble

On Thursday, Meh got a call from Z’s camp. They were doing arts and crafts with little beads, and Z had apparently decided to try to smell them, ending up with two inhaled up his nose. They were able to tweezer out one, but couldn’t get the other. Meh took him to the doctor, where they couldn’t find it but noticed some mild swelling. We were told to monitor for “copious yellow or green mucous”. Yum. All in all he did okay, but kept talking about “did you put a bead in your nose?” Afterwards, he seemed right as rain, and all weekend, he was happy and high energy.

Yesterday morning, Z’s nose started running a bit. It was clearish, but as he seemed to be getting more congested as the day went on, so after camp, mima kept an eye on O while I took Z to the Children’s Hospital’s excellent urgent care center. He recognized the surroundings from several cast-related appointments earlier in the year, and did great job waiting our turn, heading into the exam room, weighing himself, and even listening while the doctor talked to him and myself. He got a bit upset when she tried to shine the light up his nose, and she couldn’t find anything from the exam. So we were referred onward to the Children’s Hospital Emergency Department across the bridge in Seattle.

After parking, we walked into the ED – which was right past a landing pad for Childrens’ very own med-evac helicopter. Z was pleased to see it and was a happily wild man in the lobby, playing with their toys and the motion sensor doors at the entrance (indeed, the staff seemed to love having such a happy and clearly not uncomfortable/outwardly sick kid giggling his way around the lobby). Excitement of excitements, the chopper took off a few minutes later; you know it’s a children’s hospital because they had one staff member whose sole job it was to temporarily disable the front door’s motion sensor and stand in front of it, lest some overeager kid make a dash outside to go check out the helicopter.

Once we were called back into triage things were a bit more challenging for Mr. Z. Several doctors (and what seemed like an unending contingent of observing interns) came through and tried to get Z to let them look up his nose; still no obvious obstruction, and eventually they determined that the runny nose was likely just a cold unless the color and/or odor (ew again) change. (Sure enough, my own nose is running a bit this morning.) A very nice doctor told us that most of the time these kinds of things either fall or are sneezed out, or are just ingested. In between various exams, they brought us crayons and paper, and then the big winner, a pair of toy cars! At the end of a long evening at the doctor’s, Z and I thankfully headed home with vehicles in hand and comments about the doctors fixing his nose.