ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 1998) — CHICAGO -- When a child swallows a penny, it can react with stomach acid to create a toxic mixture as corrosive as car battery acid, leading to severe stomach inflammation and even ulcers, physicians at Duke University Medical Center have discovered.Sydney has had quite a busy week! This morning she stuck a penny in her mouth. I was right by her and went to sweep it out just as she gagged on it, then turned her over and tried to get it out with the help of gravity, but GULP, down it went. Since she's pretty small I worried that it would get stuck in her esophagus or bowels, so I called the Dr and asked if I needed to do anything other than wait and see. Our Dr wanted an x-ray just to make sure it wasn't lodged anywhere (I guess it could've ended up in the lungs too, but that would've been immediately apparent) and that it hadn't done any damage along the way. So we went up to Primary Children's Hospital. We were relieved to see in the x-ray that the penny is already on it's way OUT of her stomach into the intestines and it appears it will pass within the next 24 hrs. So, we have a plastic butter knife at the ready on the changing table. The things we do for these little ones....
Nobody told us this stuff about being a mom. I am going to have to slice through what to find a penny? Poor Sidney. She has had quite an eventful week.
ReplyDeleteOh...the butter knife...I am shaking at the thought. Poor girl. Poor mom!
ReplyDeleteYeah, mom did the butter knife thing when I swallowed a nickel in Kindergarten. It didn't pay off - she never saw it. She only did that once...
ReplyDeleteA few weeks later when I swallowed Sara's shiny rock, she said, "Don't worry about it. It will come out eventually." I was horrified that she wasn't rushing me right back to the dr.
Well, the penny finally made it's appearance on the other side. I think it was 5 #2 diapers later. So glad I don't have to do anymore poop dissection for a while. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know she passed the penny successfully :) Gotta love the things we do for our kids!! Yesterday it was cleaning up vomit and diarrhea flowing out the back of Cougar's diaper ... fun :(
ReplyDeleteWhen Ruby was a baby she had some unexplained diarreah that they wanted to do a test to check the cause of. I had to get some of the said diarreah into a couple of test tubes and take it down to the Dr.'s lab. That was the beginning of a long line of terrible experiences regarding my children's poop. We do things as moms that you couldn't have paid me enough to do otherwise.
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