Yesterday, sitting at my desk working on reports, my phone rings. I answer like usual and hear the ill-fated words "Mrs. Knight, this is Ms.____ from Hand-in-Hand School. Caroline has had an accident..." My mind froze and I started to panic. Then Ms. ____ (I honestly forget her name), tells me Caroline is in the nurse's station with a kernel of corn in her ear. Panic turns to "Say what???" She proceeds to tell me that she tried to get it out, but Caroline has become "uncooperative" (you think?) and I need to come up there. I tell her I will be there in less than 15 minutes and out the door I go. I call Jay to give him a heads up that I may be calling from the doctor's office or the ER, and tell him what I know. He proceeds to laugh and share the great "corn-in-ear story of '85"---that really doesn't make me feel better, but makes sense that this was hereditary and could not be avoided. I get to school and there she is, Miss. Kernel reading a book and looking pitiful. I do not recognize the clothes she has on as the ones she wore to school, but not wanting to get side-tracked I assess the immediate situation. The nurse shows me where the kernel is lodged in her ear (quite impressive) and said she cannot get it out. I start to ask Caroline what happened, but then realize we can talk in the car. I do ask about her outfit and she replies with "I spilled something too...it just isn't a good day, Mommy." I hug her, sign her out, and off we go. I call her doctor and they said "huh....we haven't had one of those in a while, but bring her in, it will be fun." Fun? Yea, thanks for the enthusiasm Nancy, but this is not "fun" we are having now. They inform me they cannot see her for another 45 minutes so we head home...to change out of those clothes. Ahhh, the clothes. Remember when you send your child to school at the beginning of the year and you pack the "spare" change of clothes? Well, she was rocking her spare-pair, and I do not remember us owning such a God-awful outfit. Since we sent it in, Caroline has grown about 2-3 inches, so the t-shirt is now an inappropriate mid-drift shirt and the shorts are just wrong and ill-fitting as well. As vain as this may sound, I was glad we had 30 minutes to kill because the last thing I needed was to walk in looking like we just got out of the woods telling the doctor "yep, my baby gots corn in her ear...can yer fix er?" ---call me a snob, but that was just not going to go down on my watch.
Well, I learned two lessons yesterday. 1- Kids will do the darndest things, and 2- bypass the pediatrician and just go on to Urgent Care of the ER when you have a foreign object in one’s ear canal. I love her doctor's office, but the entire removal process took almost 3 hours and was very traumatic. While I know it wouldn’t have been fun at the ER either, I think they could have nailed it right away as (and I was told) they have better equipment for this type of thing and do it more often. The sweet doctor we saw (ours was out...damnit, he would have LOVED this story) got the kernel out and went to do one last look and ....well, you can imagine what we find--piece #2, BROKEN piece #2. Where was #2 you may ask? Well, it was WAY down in the ear canal. So, new game plan gets put into action. I learned a third thing yesterday. She may be sassy at times, but she has the strength of a gorilla and moves like Spider Man. One doctor and three adults holding her down and they finally got the last piece out. Her inner-ear is scratched to the dickens, and after a week of ear drops...yep, those are fun as all kids who had two foreign objects removed LOVE to get drops put in there, we should recover just fine. She did apologize to the nurse she almost attacked and in return got one kick-ass Candy Land sticker to take home. I had a great morning walking in her in today and comparing stories. Caroline promised she would make sure no more corn “snuck” in her ear and went off to play with her friends. Just one more story to add to the memory book.
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