sign him up for acting classes

Tonight, while Jonah was eating his sandwich, a little bit may have gone down the wrong pipe.

He coughed vigorously. And then he proclaimed that he needed to go to the hospital.

This is because last week, on Thursday night, he was eating cashews. Except for this one cashew that he held up to his mouth and accidentally—Fwooop!—inhaled instead of ate it.

He looked stunned. I flipped him over on my leg, thumped his back. Nothing came out. He said he could still feel it at the back of his throat. His breathing sounded fine but I was worried. We tried lots of things: coughing, gargling with water, a spoonful of honey, giant spoonfulls of applesauce, standing on his hands.

“It just went past my teeth and into my throat,” he reported.

I called the doctor who told me that it could be lodged in the back of his throat and could fall into his trachea while he was sleeping and I had to take him to the emergency room. Really? Yes. Oh great. (Side note 1: Emergency Room visits aren’t covered on our insurance until after we reach our $3K out of pocket deductible, which we haven’t yet — but after this visit we might. Side note 2: Scott was out of town. I was doing this trip solo.)

I called the neighbors and asked them to put the chickens away and trundled us off to the E.R. where over 5 hours he had my undivided attention and unlimited access to television and during which time we met with 4 doctors, 3 of whom thought he was fine and 1 who wanted him admitted to be put under anesthesia and scoped. Oh, and 2 hours into the experience he informed me that the nut was no longer in his throat but had moved. To his forehead. At which point we had not yet seen even one doctor because for some reason that night the facility was understaffed by half. I probably should have just put his clothes on and gone home. But after what the doctor on the phone had said, I couldn’t stop worrying.

The surgeons wouldn’t go for the lone pediatrician’s recommendation unless Jonah had x-rays. So he had them. 5. Should have been 4 but the tech messed one up. And then they gave me the option to take him home and just watch him because the x-rays were normal and the scope would probably be more traumatic at this point than his vital signs warranted. And then Jonah got a popsicle. Because he knows from his last visit when he had pneumonia that at the hospital one gets popsicles.

(Would link to post of that previous E.R. experience but amazingly I didn’t blog it here. In sum: boy was struggling to breathe, we went to E.R., one x-ray, plus major antibiotics—and a popsicle—and by the next morning he was on the mend. His first E.R. visit before he was even 1 years old is documented, here. No popsicle that time. I suppose we could count the popsicle I had while in labor.)

All that to say that since Thursday, he’s been pitching to go back.

On Friday night, he had something stuck in his teeth. It hurt. I said, “Do you think you need to go to the hospital?”

Yes, he said.

Uh huh.

Tonight he said the crumbs from his sandwich felt like a fly stuck in his throat. He had some applesauce, drank some water, asked for honey. Talked about gargling, and demanded repeatedly between these actions to go back to the hospital. Then he said he HAD swallowed a fly.

This is not imaginary, he said.

A very passionate monologue ensued about how the fly would not be dislodged by applesauce or hanging upside down and later, he proclaimed that since there were no holes for it to get out of his stomach it couldn’t breathe in there and it died. Only imagine that this story required three times as many sentences, much emphatic arm flapping, and repetition from start to finish more than once.

I tried to get it on video but the camera was low on batteries. A small portion is all I have to share. I hate to share even this tiny bit because it is SUCH a tease. But I promise to put new batteries in the camera and catch his next dramatic interpretation of a tragedy or other event because surely, there will be more…