Nose Job

The piece of selloscotch tape above came out of Daniel's nose. We're not quite sure how it got up there. Daniel says that he doesn't know, Alex said he was smelling it. (My finger is there for scale, I've got quite a big finger and he's got quite a small nose).

We discovered that Daniel had a piece of tape up his nose shortly before it was time to leave for school. We spent a while trying to make him blow it out, which got nowhere - mostly because he's not much good at blowing his nose, and partly because he tends to sniff immediately after.

I took Alex to school while Susanne started to dig with some tweezers. I was all for sending him to school - I figured it would work it's way out, and it wasn't really toxic. But I sought the advice of other parents, who said I should ask the doctor.

However, on January 1st we changed health insurance plans. To register with a doctor you need your health insurance card, and for reasons that I suspect are due to someone's incompetence, we didn't have them for the boys yet. (I had one, Susanne had one with my surname on, which is no use because they always want some other form of ID). So, we didn't have a doctor. We rang the NurseLine (think NHS Direct) and asked them what to do. Just like with NHS Direct, they told us to take him to the Emergency Room.


I had visions of glamorous doctors and nurses rushing about shouting things like 'clear' and sitting on top of trolleys pumping on people's chests whilst dealing with the crowds of people in the waiting room with heart attacks and gunshot wounds and car accidents and drug overdoses whilst exchanging the sort of looks that people exchange when they slept together for the first time last night, aren't sure if it was a mistake, and don't know if anyone else knows.

But before we could experience this excitement for ourselves, we had to find the ER. Our nearest hospital is called the Centinela Freeman , and is the place that Kanye West's mother was taken, when she died. I knew where the hospital was (we go past it quite often) but not where the emergency entrance was - so we circled the block until we found it.

I stopped the car outside the entrance and took Daniel in (I was practicing for when there was blood spraying from him). The waiting room was not really like the waiting room on ER. For a start, it was rather small - maybe 15 chairs, in total. There was a window where you registered, and a large fish tank, with only 4 fish in it (there could have been more hiding). There were two other people in the waiting room - what looked like a mother and her (about) 10 year old daughter. We were in their for a while, and I think one other person came in. No one was bleeding. No one was on a trolley (I didn't even see a trolley). The doctors and nurses didn't exchange any kind of looks, except slightly bored ones. An ambulance drove in, fairly slowly, and then drove away again.

Despite the lack of people, the main feature of the trip to the hospital consisted of waiting - just like in England. First, I had to see someone to fill out the insurance forms (I felt slightly foolish filling in the section that said "Nature of problem"). Then we took Dan to see a nurse who did things like weigh him, and take his temperature and pulse - that seemed a little unnecessary given that he'd had a bit of tape up his nose for a little over an hour at that point, but I suppose they need to be sure.

Then we went back to the waiting room and waited. Then we saw another nurse who took us to a triage room where we waited. (With a bizarre bed that seemed to double as some sort of cage; and several magazines to read, but all on quilting - really, I didn't know there was one magazine on quilting). Then another person came to see if we were there, and we waited some more. And then the doctor came, with a small entourage of 3 people. (Daniel was very impressed, because the doctor was bigger than Daddy).

He had brought with him the "getting things out of children's nose kit". Got a pair of long, blunt nose (which made me happier) tweezers, had a member of entourage hold a light, and hoofed out the piece of tape (pictured above), which was much larger than we thought it would be.

We filled out more forms and went to school. Daniel was very excited, and kept his identification bracelet on to show his teacher. He told Alex about it, at some length, which made us slightly nervous in case Alex thought that it so exciting that he should stuff some tape up his nose too. But that hasn't happened (yet).