When he was younger, my nephew managed to shove a pea so far up his nostril that he ended up spending several hours in the emergency room while the doctors and nurses tried to get it out. Eventually, they did. Not long after, however, he did it again. Luckily, this time, his mom was able to get it out and avoid another trip to the ER.Apparently, my nephew isn't the only one to have tried this stunt. MomLogic has a list of the top ten things kids stick up their noses, along with the dangers and what to do about them. French fries are not one I would have expected to see on the list, but Crayons -- the same shape and size -- certainly are. Scarily, Kleenex is on the list, since young children may not quite get it that the tissue is supposed to stay on the outside.
Of course, the classic pea is there, along with its cousin the bean. Interestingly, jelly beans are not on the list -- I know my sister once came to the revelation that jelly beans would fit perfectly in her dog's nostrils; luckily she never actually tested her theory. The important thing here, I guess, is that you always have to keep a close eye on your kids -- and their noses.
1. A long time ago in the early days of this site, a contest was run asking for parenting gone wrong stories. I won a SkipHop bag for the story I submitted of my sister and her daughter. (Toddler in excersaucer has an explosive bowel movement that gets all over her and the excersaucer, mother freaks out and calls all of her parents and sisters for advice which is essentially to dump the baby and the excersaucer into the tub. Sister calls back again panicked: she can't get the excersaucer through the door, is told to turn it on its side but she can't because the baby is still in the excersaucer and her mother is afraid to touch her with all that poop!)
My sister and her daughter have done it again! I got a panicked call one evening: my niece has shoved a popcorn kernel up her nose, what to do?! My sister is totally hysterical and it takes some of my doula skills to get her calmed down enough to talk. They can't get the kernel out themselves. I tell her to head over to ER and they'll remove it with skinny tongs.
"But", my sister wails, "what if she breathes in and the kernel lodges in her brain??!!!" Seems my sister thought the nasal cavity opened strait into the brain and feared irreversible brain damage. An explanation of the sinus system calmed her down and a nice ER doctor removed the kernel a few hours later.
Posted at 4:58PM on Jul 2nd 2008 by mamaloo