First Emergency Room Visit

Sunday, April 26, 2009: I was getting ready to meet my friend Graz for brunch at Noon. I was cleaning up the house when I got a call from JP (and his mom who was visiting from Dallas). They went to Home Depot to buy some screws for the kitchen cabinet when his mom noticed that Joseph had something in his mouth. JP tried to pull it out, but he actually pushed the object further down the back of his throat. JP said he then pushed on Joseph’s stomach with his arm and that caused him to throw up and out popped the object: A lock washer. See the picture below.

JP picked up Joseph and the washer and took him to the emergency room. He actually didn’t call me until he was at the ER, but that’s a different story for another day. When I got to the ER, Joseph looked fine and was playing with some books. The nurses called us back to a room and they checked him out. He had an x-ray to make sure he didn’t swallow anything else.

The doctors and nurses were so happy he didn’t swallow the lock washer. Look at that jagged edge! The doctors said if he had swallowed it, then it could have cut his intestines and so on. So scary!

But JP is beating himself up right now. As he was trying to get the washer out of Joseph’s mouth, he actually pushed it further back in his mouth and then down his throat a beat. Ewwww. So parents out there. How do you get your children to spit out things they put into their mouths? The doctor’s seemed happy that JP forced it out but I am not so sure.

P.S. We are signing up for a CPR class next month. This was a huge wake-up call. And something tells me this won’t be out last visit to the ER.