Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Empty Heads

I had so many things to write about. I could have told you about my fabulous family vacation, a week with my mom and my five siblings and their families in a big rustic house in the Poconos. I could have told you about how living for a week with my two pregnant sisters, one in the deepest throes of morning sickness, gave me an outside awareness of just how hard it is to nurture new life. I could have told you about my insight into the passage of Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well and what that has to do with the upcoming Synod. Heck, I could have just written my novel.

But no. All of that is out of my head right now, because today I'm pulling things out of other people's heads. Things like this.



That's a piece of foam that had been stuck in my four-year-old's nose. For more than a month, probably.  During that month, we put a lot of time into combatting the strange head funk she'd developed. It wasn't her hair. We'd washed it and cut it and made sure she couldn't chew it. It wasn't her teeth. She'd been to the dentist and received a clean bill of health. We made her stop licking her hands and sucking her fingers. And still, the odor persisted. It seemed to come right from her forehead.

Fearing she had a sinus infection, I moved her check-up up a week, but I was still uneasy. She wasn't complaining of pain until I asked her if her nose hurt, and suddenly, yes it did, right up here, Mommy. And then, in a stellar example of why I'll never shut down my Facebook account, I put out a query, and a nurse friend suggested a foreign body in the nose, and I held the four-year-old's head up to look, and there was something huge and gray in her nose.

Let me tell you that it is a delicate operation to stick a pair of tweezers up a four-year-old's nose. It requires the right blend of reassurance and gentle words and dire threats about what the doctor will do if I have to take you into the emergency room to have them pull this out, and then they'll strap you to a board, and how about you just let Mommy get it right now HOLD YOUR HEAD STILL FOR FIVE SECONDS. And then we both stared at the gooshy wad of stinking, moldering foam at the end of the tweezers, as blood dripped gently out of her nostril. And I did not faint and I did not throw up (both of which seemed like very viable options), but I washed off the little girl and asked her blow her nose, and sent her off to play. And then I sat on a stool in the kitchen with my head in my hands, wishing it would all just go away, until a distant shrieking informed me that the big sister who was supposed to hold the sleeping baby had put him on the bed, and he'd just rolled off and fallen on his head.

One day I'd like to have deep thoughts again. One day I'd like to have some energy. One day I'd like a good night's sleep, the kind from which you wake up refreshed, without aching joints and a stiff neck. But today, I'm going to settle for defunking sinus cavities, which should really feel like a more worthwhile, fulfilling, productive activity than it does.

9 comments:

Barb said...

That happened to one of Mark's sisters...only with her it was the peas she didn't want to eat. Disgusting indeed.

Rebekka said...

Man, why do they do these things?!

Bill E. said...

This is the same Pidge who had the head fracture. Maybe she'll be your medical story kid. Every family's got one, right?

Mary said...

Your Grandmother, having had 4 kids in 5 1/2 years, always said that she felt like she had spent 10 years in a fog. After doing the same, I agree completely. Everyday life has too many life threatening situations that occur continually; no time for regular, everyday normal thoughts and pursuits; to the point that when your kids are grown and you start to pursue other thoughts and activities that you feel guilty, like you are forgetting something really important.....

Anonymous said...

My youngest brother stuck an M&M up his nose, much to the terror of the baby sitter. Luckily it was a much shorter story--an hour later, his crying/laughing (elicited by his brothers' tales of what exactly was going to happen to said M&M) ejected the intruder forcefully across the kitchen.

Also, my daughter licks rocks.

Rob

Jenny said...

I told the oldest about this little misadventure and she couldn't wait to tell the four year old boy. No! We don't need to put any ideas in his head.

Finicky Cat said...

A classic tale! And a very enjoyable piece of mommy-blogging, Mrs Darwin.

Since we're sharing stories…a two-year-old of mine once took advantage of the cover offered by a big family Easter dinner to sit in her highchair packing one nostril tight with bits of cashew. We were upset but not shocked, though, because her older brother had done the same thing a few years before with sausage meat.

Yeah. WHY?

Emily J. said...

Gross. And cool. I'm impressed you did the extraction yourself. We've used tweezers to disembed splinters, ticks, rocks, and pennies, but never month-old foam.

Becky said...

I would have fainted for sure.