When is an apple not an apple?

Wednesday night was pretty dreadful, and Buddy continued to behave in a more and more frantic kind of way on Thursday morning. The Hubby and I decided that he must be pretty uncomfortable and it was time to get the apple out. The E/N/T we had been seeing wasn't available to do the surgical intervention that day, but she referred us to another doctor who was.

We had to start the process by going in for a pre-op appointment in the morning, so we packed up and headed over to the clinic. After getting Buddy's vitals checked and waiting for a while (since the doctor was fitting us in between her other appointments) the doctor arrived to take a look.

She confirmed that the apple was still lodged in his sinuses, and decided to give it a try at getting it out. So, once again the Hubby, nurse and I restrained the boy (who was by now screaming his head off) and the doctor started poking. And prodding, And pulling. And suctioning. And pulling some more.

Lo and behold, she got it out! It was big, covered with goo,lumpy, brown on one end... hey wait a minute...

that's not a piece of apple, it's a piece of WALNUT!!!

The boy had shoved a 1 x 1.5 cm piece of walnut up into his sinus cavity. Stop and think for a minute about how big that is (if you're American you may need to get out a ruler to picture it). Then stop and think about how that would feel shoved up your nose. Then stop and think about how much smaller the nose of a 21 month old is, and how that must have felt to him. Ugh, it's no surprise that he couldn't sleep, I'm amazed he did as well as he did for so long.

So, the saga of the food up the nose comes to an end. There's no sign of infection, no trauma, a little bit of sleep retraining to deal with after a week of interrupted sleep, but we came through it in one piece,

My biggest hope is that the boy has learned something from all this, and won't be shoving anything else up his nose ever again!