My toddler loves her piggy bank. We haven’t been giving her a regular stream of money to put in it and we really should start. Jessie likes to play piggy bank with Daddy. Together they take the money out and put it back in. They’ll play for quite some time repeating the cycle. This is not a new game.
Last night, though, Jessie changed the way she plays the game. Jessie lost her mind. For reasons only a toddler can comprehend, Jessie decided to put a coin in her mouth and swallowed it. Daddy knew she did it after she started coughing and crying and saying, “Money hurt.” He didn’t know which denomination coin she ate or if she ate more than one.
Daddy brought our distressed child out into the living room where I was and told me what happened. She was drooling a lot with some blood. I called the after-hours nurse line at our pediatrician’s office. The nurse who called back told me that since Jess was coughing up blood to go ahead and take her to the emergency room.
As much as I wanted to take her directly to Children’s Hospital in Plano, we didn’t know if her airway was at all obstructed and if a 45-minute drive was wise. We went to the Presbyterian Hospital nearby instead. We got into triage quickly. The nurse assessed Jessie and sent her for a chest and neck X-ray quickly. Jessie did not like standing still for the X-ray. She wanted to be held. She got through the X-rays and the tech showed me the images right away. There was one quarter lodged in her throat. The good news was that it was in her esophagus and not her trachea.
Check back for the next chapter of our hospital adventure.