What's in your nose?

My friend sent me this card.....................I laughed and laughed.

I didn't even have to read what she had written inside to know why she sent it.

I'll tell you the story.
Stop me if you've heard this one.
Well,.... most of you (if you've ever talked to me in person) probably have heard it.... but you can't really stop me from writing.......So, feel free to click away at any time, or not.
It's up to you.
I'll be telling the story wether or not you choose to read.
You see, that's why these blogs are such a good thing for me, because I'm a teller of stories - not in the untruths sort of way but in the sharing of truths that are amazing, funny, inspiring, and interesting - at least to me. So in a blog I can put my stories out there and imagine that people are interested in what I have to say rather than worrying about if they're just trying to be polite by listening.
So here it goes.

It all started in the spring of 2002. We moved into a new (to us) rental house with a great yard. There were apple, pear and plum trees, lots of room for a garden and lots and lots of old rotten fruit all over the yard.
We had three kids at the time; Banana 5, Duder almost 4, and Doodle 20 months.

The yard was great because it was fenced and for the first time I felt like the kids could play outside and be relatively safe without me hovering over them every moment. I really enjoyed watching the kids through the window playing with the ants or digging in the dirt out back while I did the dishes inside. 

It all seemed too good to be true.....I guess it really was.

One day Doodle (20 months) sat on the floor in the kitchen playing. I sat down to play with him when suddenly he sneezed. The sneeze wasn't that surprising but what came out of his nose was -

•  a pea,
•  a piece of cracker,
•  a piece of cheese,
•  a cherry pit, 
• a small rock 
•  three bird seeds.

 I was horrified!
 How could all of that stuff  have been in my baby's nose?
 I looked up his nose and there was MORE up there!

 Mostly peas, which, we were able to get out.

A few days later we (my husband and I) started to notice that our baby stunk but not because he was dirty, he was clean, squeaky in fact. While we were discussing what could be going on our daughter mentioned that she had seen Doodle putting things in his nose again, .....outside.
First I thought, "Why did you not mention this before?" and then "What did he find outside to stick up his nose?"

Sure enough he had a nose full of junk --- not just any junk though ---- A nose full of plum pits!!!
He had stuck the plum pit in wide end first so, all we could see was the pointy end of the pit way - way -way up there. We didn't know how we were going to get that thing out of there but we knew we had to try.

I don't know if you've ever attempted to wrestle and pin a 40 pound octopus while trying to extract a foreign body from one of his orifices, but it's hard, very hard.
It involves flailing appendages and a lot of screaming.
After quite a few tries we decided that the tweezers were going to do a lot more damage than good with our little guy worked up the way he was. Our solution was to try again after he fell asleep.

So during the night while Doodle was sound asleep in his bed we crept silently to his side, tweezers and flashlight in hand.
Can you imagine waking up to your parents leaning over your face with tweezers and a flashlight? If that's not a lifetime of therapy waiting to happen I don't know what is. Needless to say we were unsuccessful again so we decided to let our pediatrician have a go at it in the morning.
Luckily he was able to retrieve it fairly painlessly.

Naively, I thought the experience had been traumatic enough that my baby wouldn't try to stick things up his nose again.
Boy was I wrong!
I underestimated the stubbornness of my boy.
Two days later we were in the doctor's office again, this time it was a couple of cherry pits up his nose.

A few days after that it was another plum pit.

Our dream yard had turned into a nightmare. All of the old rotten fruit in the grass offered a plethora of nose stuffing items.

Our frequent pediatrician visits continued for a few weeks and I built a strange kind of friendship with the nurses and office staff.
After I discovered Doodle had stuck something up his nose I would call the Dr.'s office.

Our phone conversation usually went something like this.

Me, "Hi, this is Carol ----. Doodle has stuck something up his nose again."

Dr.'s office slightly trying to cover the receiver, talking to the other office staff, "Doodle's done it again." "Laugh, laugh, snort, giggle" "Really?" "Giggle, belly laugh, snort." "Okay, you can bring him right in. See you in a couple of minutes."

Me, "Thank you.....I think."

-

Once I told someone how many times I had taken Doodle to the doctor's office to have things taken out of his nose. She laughed and said, "They [office staff] must laugh really hard when they get off the phone with you."

My response was, "They don't wait until they get off the phone."

-

Eventually our pediatrician sent me home with my own tools to extract various foreign objects from my child's nose. I was concerned that our insurance wouldn't pay for the tools and I didn't think we could afford them. Our pediatrician told me not to worry about it, he wasn't going to charge us and I could bring the tools back once Doodle had grown out of this obsession with his nose.

The doctor figured this would save us both a lot of time. He was right, it did save a lot of time but we did have the occasional pesky cherry pit that just wouldn't cooperate. On such occasions the doctor had to get inventive with some I.V. tubing for example.
I won't go into details but let me just say to all of you, avoid sticking cherry pits in your nose......at all costs.
During this particular cherry pit removal the pit slipped back instead of coming out of the front of his nose. The doctor didn't know if the pit had gone into Doodle's stomach or into his lungs -- (Doodle was screaming pretty good when the pit slipped.)
 If it had gone in his stomach no big deal but if it was in his lungs he needed immediate surgery.
So off we went to the hospital for some x-rays. Luckily it was in his stomach.

-

It just so happened that this experience was traumatic enough that it almost did the trick of curing him of his fascination with his nose.
I think he only had one or two more times after this.

-

It all finally ended with a bang........Literally. One evening while we were saying a blessing on dinner I heard Doodle sneeze and then a loud bang on the table. After the prayer I opened my eyes and there on the table sat a pit encased in neon green slime.
I had no idea how long it had been in up his nose but by the looks of things it had been quite a while. Doodle seemed very relieved to have it out and as far as I know he hasn't tried to stick anything in there since then.

-

That- was the longest year of my life.

-

The other day I saw Doodle holding a Lego piece up to his face, close to his nose.

My inner calm, patient voice said, "That's no big deal. Let's wait and watch and see what the young one does."

My hyperactive, over-reacting, over-protective mom voice said, "What, are you crazy? Knock that thing out of his hand. Get it as far away from his nose as possible."

I find that as a mother my inner calm voice doesn't win out very often. This was no exception - well, maybe it was a compromise because what I ended up saying was, "Doodle, please don't put that toy by your nose and whatever you do, don't put it in your nose."

He smiled, because he remembers. Then he said, "Okay mom."

-

And that was that.

-

Now, you know why the card made me laugh.

1)Because I'm so glad that part of our life is over.

2)Because, Yeah --- the whole experience was just crazy, funny.

3)Did I mention I'm glad it's over?

4)I pray my baby now doesn't decide she's fascinated with fruit pits and her nose.

5)We have no fruit trees in our yard.

-

Thanks Cheryn for the laugh!

This has been a novel, I know.

Congratulations on reading the whole thing


P.S. My boy is a tease!
Once he asked my mom for 2 suckers. (I think he was 5)
She said "Okay, but why do you need 2 suckers?"
"One for me, One for my nose." was his answer.
You should have seen my mom's face. It was priceless.
You should have seen my boy's face. It was priceless too.