I groaned when I saw the chief complaint on the board “runny nose”. You have got to f**king kidding me, right? Reluctantly, I shuffled over to room #1 and etched a smile onto my face. “Hi, I’m Jeff, I’m the doc here. I hear that the little guy has a runny nose.” And then I looked at the kid. His face was puffed out on the right, and he had stanky, purulent snot oozing out of his nose. Technically, it was still a runny nose, but something wasn’t right.
The parents said that his little bro just learned how to pick his nose and may have stuck his finger up the kid’s nose two days ago. I tried to look up in there, but all I saw was a nostril swollen shut. I figured there just had to be something up there that I couldn’t see. So I had mom blow hard into the kid’s mouth while I held the opposite nostril shut. This works pretty much every time to get out the little crap that kids jam up their noses. But the nostril was so plugged up, air wasn’t even getting through.
Something wasn’t right, but I wasn’t sure what, so I sent him to ENT. The ENT had a similar experience, and was just about to send the kid home with antibiotics when he felt a hard “tink” when he went to suction. After some wrestling, he ended up pulling out a button battery from the kid’s nose. That was a close one. Button batteries are notorious killers of kids who swallow them because they erode through the intestinal wall. This battery had eroded a fair part of the kids nasal passage, and if we had missed it, it would have eroded into his sinuses and BRAIN!
(n.b. an excessively graphic photo used to be here, but my wife told me it was too gross for public consumption.)
Claire took some Alchemist shirts over to Elephant Journal for product review. Hopefully they dig it and are willing to give us some props. Supposed to have received the Alchemist team kit by now. Hope to get it soon, and have some pics up.
Team Alchemist Blog 