Sarah's trip to the ER

Sarah is a dream child, really. She is helpful, thoughtful, sweet, loving, forgiving, and everything I could ever want in a daughter. She is a very easy child as well, but in her short four years she has given us a couple medical scare. (like most kids) Her first scare was when she had her febrile seizure back in 08'. The other happened yesterday.

On Saturday night I went on a daddy/daughter date with my dad to Indian food. (YUMMY) Mike called me after we'd ordered to tell me Sarah had swallowed a penny and he wanted to take her to insta care. I had the car seats, so he took Steven to a neighbors (thanks Crystal) and borrowed one of theirs. I wasn't very worried, because I've heard of kids swallowing coins and then passing them at a later date and Sarah was four, not a baby. It was just her luck that the penny lodged perfectly in her throat.


They told us that there was a good chance it would drop and to bring her back Sunday afternoon for a follow up x-ray. If it had dropped, great. If not, we'd have to take her to Primary Children's hospital for removal. In the morning Sarah said she couldn't feel it in her throat anymore and thought it was in her belly, so we were hopeful. Unfortunately, it was in the exact same place as before. We headed up to the ER around 3PM.

They told us there were a couple ways to get the coin out. The "easier", non-surgical/anaesthesia needing way, was to put a tube down her nose to her throat, inflate a balloon under the coin, and pull it up. This would have been really easy, had it not happened to a scared four year old little girl. They had to restrain her, which meant tying her to a board with her hands above her head. To make it worse, despite my protests, they wouldn't let me be next to her because of the x-ray machine they used and my being pregnant. They tried three times, but she was crying and yelling so much they couldn't get it out. It took her a while to calm down.

Thankfully they were able to fit us in quickly for "surgery". She had to be put under, but there weren't any incisions or anything, so it was much easier. They sedated her in my arms and were done about 40 minutes later. They had her stick around in recovery for another 1 1/2 hrs to eat, drink, and be monitored, but finally let us go around 9:45 PM.

I'm still not sure why she ate it, but if you ask her, you'll get one of a couple responses. An audible uuhhhggg....followed by an exasperated "I just wanted to feel what it was like having money in my body." or "Steven was playing with it, so I took it away." (w/o an explanation as to how it ended up in her body)

She usually likes to tell her teachers about interesting things, but said she didn't want to tell them about this because they learned about money last week and they told the kids to never eat money. (I have as well if you're wondering)

Thankfully everything turned out fine and she's back to her normal self today. Her throat doesn't hurt at all, which is lucky considering the two different procedures and having it there for 24 hrs. At least she's learned a valuable lesson. :-) We're just really grateful it turned out so well.