Our 5 Hour Evening at the ER....

It all started so innocently.

We'd just finished our evening swim and were headed home from the gym for dinner. Matt had bought some trail mix earlier in the evening and we were sharing it with the kids on the way home. About the time we hit Springville, Steff looked back and saw Charlie sniffing and sneezing. Upon further inspection, we realized he'd stuffed a half a peanut up his schnoz.

Yep. Full on, peanut up his nose.



So we pulled off the freeway and initiated our contingency plans:

Plan A - Our first thought was to grab some tweezers and fish it out. Well, 5 minutes later, with the peanut climbing up higher and higher, we abandoned Plan A. Plan A - FAILURE.

Plan B - Check the clock. It's 7:45pm. We've got 15 minutes until the walk-in clinic closes.... drive very fast. We arrive as they're shutting down their systems, so Matt gets Charlie checked in while Steff takes Charlie back for the Doc to start digging. When Matt and Winston finally get back to Charlie's room, they find Charlie being held down by 3 nurses and 1 Steff... and the doctor is giving up. He's managed to push the peanut up further and make Charlie's nose bleed. (Not his fault... Charlie is being very uncooperative) Plan B - FAILURE.

Plan C - Emergency Room. Boy... I don't even know how to explain this one. First thing: don't go to the ER after 8pm if you can help it. Seriously shady characters there. We had two visits from police men and some weird folks we got to hang out with. Anyways, at around 11:30pm we were finally admitted. The Doc struggled around, trying to get an eye on the peanut. I was frustrated, since not 30 minutes before I'd seen the stupid thing up there, without the use of any fancy equipment. He couldn't see it and advised we started with the 'old fashion way.' Plug the free nostril, put my mouth over his mouth creating a seal, and blow hard. I guess the object is to try to shoot the thing out like a cannonball. Didn't work. So we went with our next option and they sedated the poor little guy. He was basically like a zombie. His eyes were open but he was not there. While sedated, they routed around, looking for the bane of our ER existence, to no avail. The Doc found jack squat. Plan C - FAILURE.



After hanging out to make sure he came out of the sedation OK, we got out of there around 1:15am. We were tired, and as you can expect, the kids were beat. Winston did pretty good, considering all things, but it was a long night. We were all pretty excited for yesterday to end.

End result: 5 wasted hours, unknown costs, and no idea where the freakin' peanut is.