This weekend brought upon more that we expected. It all started shortly after dinner on Saturday.
After eating dinner, the kids went off to play when we heard some
awful sounds coming out of Natalie... she was choking. I scooped her up and flipped her upside down and prepared to start assisting in dislodging whatever was preventing her from breathing, when she started to cry... phew...! After her initial scare and panic we asked her what she swallowed... "a penny!"
Well, holy hell... another thing they don't teach you to be prepared for as a parent. Knowing nothing of the subject I called 911 from our home phone.
*Note: don't attempt to call 911 from your
Vonage line. I eventually hung up and called from my cell phone.
About 2 minutes later, what
appeared to be, the whole fire department showed up. About a minute before that Natalie threw-up twice... panic had now begun to set in (for me and Katie). They listened to her lungs and one guy, not the one giving the "exam," recommended we take her to the E.R. Everyone else was standing there watching our TV and looking around our house.
I took her to a new hospital down the street that I didn't even know they finished building yet. There weren't many people in there so we basically registered and within a few minutes were back in out little curtain room. Several minutes later a woman entered our chambers with a rolling wireless computer
apparatus and recorded all of our information. About an hour later we went back in for X-rays.
We were then led back into our room where, about 45 minutes later, the doctor came in to alert me that the penny was lodged in her throat. It was stuck in a manner that if you were to look directly at her throat... you would be able to see the face of the coin. Lucky for us it lodged as it did and she was still able to breathe. They were placing calls to a different hospital for her to receive surgery to have the penny removed.
About an hour later the ambulance showed up to transport both me and Natalie to the other hospital where they had already been alerted and had the O.R.
prepped and staffed. We arrived at the hospital and after dealing with the registration headaches, she went in to surgery. The surgery didn't last too long and the doctor came out with a container that held the penny. While talking to the doctor it was very clear that the "penny" was indeed a nickel.
I was led back into recovery where I stayed with her as she came out of her
anesthesia. We stayed for about 90 minutes post-op before I had to figure out how we were going to get back to the first hospital, as I had no idea where in the hell we were. Thankfully, because of issues that surfaced during the delay of surgery due to registration... the hospital paid for the cab ride back to our car. Cab... WAY more comfortable than an ambulance.
We got home roughly 7 hours after arriving at the first hospital... a little wiser, a lot exhausted, and extremely relieved.
Everyone is fine now and aside from a bruise on Natalie's arm from the IV, you would be able to tell anything happened. Kids really do bounce back quickly.
