Guess where I found a tiny piece of cardboard?!?

MrNurse(x2), ADN · Oct 18, 2016

My son put a stick on eye, with the loose pupil, in his ear. Urgent care doc put him in a papoose AND left. He yelled at me when I took him out of it for the 5 minutes he was gone. I proceeded to let him know about JCAHO restraint standards and how he was horribly in non compliance. I hate urgent cares for pediatric care (sorry OD, we don't have a pediatric one in my area).

vampiregirl, BSN, RN · Oct 18, 2016

My absolute favorite object in the ear story is from my pre-nursing days. I was working in a group home for developmentally delayed adults. One of our gentleman was c/o his ear hurt so our group home nurse peaked in his ear with her otoscope. He earned himself a field trip to the doctor as all she could see was something green. The physician was able to successfully retrieve a sprouted seed from his ear. I'm still curious to this day to know what kind of seed it was:)

SaltineQueen · Oct 19, 2016

My now 10 year old put a white tic-tac up his nose when he was a little guy. I guess it started dissolving & burned a bit, so he started flipping out. He was able to blow it out pretty easily.

When my now 7 year old was a little guy he was acting like his nose was stuffy, sniffing & snorting all the time. When I looked up there I saw something white, which I guessed was a polyp. I asked him if he put something up there & he told me it was a popcorn kernel. I said, pfft, no! No child of mine would do that. We tried & tried to blow it out...nothing...certainly it wasn't a popcorn kernel. After a couple weeks of no improvement on nasal steroids, we went to the ENT. Guess what it was? Doc said it was so far up there no amount of blowing was going to move it out.

Then in my sweet little daughter stuck a Smartie up her nose. Fearing another $450 simple extraction by the ENT, I started flipping out. She started crying, which produced just enough snot & moisture for it to dissolve & slide right out.

Knock on wood...nothing in ears.

AvaRose · Oct 19, 2016

I actually asked today out of curiosity how long it took to extract the pencil and my boss said with all the waiting in the ER and the doctor who felt it was beneath him to do procedures when a nurse could do it but had to do it himself when no nurse was available that all together it was a 4 hour ER visit and most of it spent poking in his ear and making him scream since the doctor wasn't all that great at the whole process of removing shards of pencil from an ear.

xoemmylouox, ASN, RN · Oct 19, 2016

My daughter put part of a soft rubber part in her nose (on Dad's watch). He got that sucker out with some guidance from me. I teased him about how she did that under his care. Then she stuck a mint up that same nostril on my watch. Rotten kid :)

She learned her lesson after that one. That sucker burned as it melted. It was too far up to try to dig out. Thankfully she hasn't put anything else up there (knock on wood).

Kids will put anything anywhere.. Just like some adults. :wacky:

Cattz, ADN · Oct 19, 2016

Ears. Really. Was at a ballgame last night. 2 or my schools happened to be playing each other. One of the teachers came to me.

Teacher: I REALLY needed you today!

Me: What did I miss?

Teacher: One of my kids (2nd grade) put a wadded up piece of paper in his ear.

Me: He couldn't get is out with his fingernail?

Teacher; Nope. I got it with the tweezers.

Me: :bag: (long silence) :blink: :no: Ears are very delicate, we have to be careful. ( There was a WHOLE lot more that I wanted to say, but that was not the time or the place) :nurse: :banghead: C'MON NOW!!

Farawyn · Oct 19, 2016

Thank goodness you said EAR.

I was just getting the popcorn. :blink:

MHDNURSE · Oct 19, 2016

My first nursing job was at a community clinic. There was a teen who came in c/o ear pain. Doc looked into ear and asked me to do an ear lavage (we used a water pik) so she could see into the canal because "something" was blocking her view. Proceeded to do lavage for a good 4-5 minutes and only yellowish water came out...until there was a sudden splash, and a GIANT dead cockroach came out. :arghh: I gagged and had to excuse myself from the room for a minute. How could one not feel a live cockroach crawling into one's ear???????

And at my current job, we have twins (in first grade now) who have a history of inserting things into their ears and noses. Last year I pulled out a few pencil eraser caps, balled up paper, and some sort of bead. I also pulled a HUGE wad of paper out of a K's nose last year. It took a while to get at it and once it came out, I couldn't believe how she was even able to get it up there.

And my favorite foreign body story ever...at my peds clinic where I worked for years, we had a five year-old girl brought in with some lady partsl discharge. Mom was understandably concerned. We called a GYN doc from upstairs to come take a look. She couldn't get a good view and didn't want to traumatize the little girl by holding her down in frog legs, so they booked an OR to do it under sedation. Since I had helped with the case and was good friends with the OB, they invited me in for the procedure. I was in pre-op waiting with mom and the little girl was crying and upset and mom kept telling her "don;t worry, they will give you a band-aid and make everything better". Mom proceeded to tell me how her little girl loves band-aids. Yup, you guessed it...the foreign body we extracted from her lady parts was not one, but 10 wadded up bandaids :nono: Mom was HORRIFIED when we told her, but we all good a good laugh out of it. We said "yes, obviously, she really does love bandaids" . Needless to say, mom made sure they were no longer accessible to her anymore.

NanaPoo · Oct 19, 2016

ANNNND..it's my own fault for eating my salad while reading this thread.

When I was in nursing school I worked at a family practice and my doc found a live roach in a kid's ear who was having excruciating ear pain. The doc said cockroaches only can go forward, not backward, so when stuck in an ear canal they will panic and dig forward. I don't know how true that is but I was mortified at the time. He put a few drops of mineral oil in the ear canal to drown the roach then pulled him out with forceps. That was 20 years and 5 states ago and it feels like yesterday.

When I started as a school nurse a mom of a preschooler brought her kid in because he'd shoved an orange Tic Tac up his nose so far you couldn't even see it. For a solid year after that every time he walked by the clinic he'd say to his mom, "see, mom, I not put tic tac in my nose."

chasinRT · Oct 19, 2016

Had a kid last year with a giant hunk of eraser in his ear. It was shaped and positioned so that I could easily grab it with tweezers. Kid had NO IDEA how it could have gotten there. None! He was flabbergasted! Had a frequent flyer with an earring back in her ear. Quite a ways in, I wouldn't touch it. Grandma came in and picked her up. Thirty seconds later she came back in. Grandma came armed with tweezers and pulled it out in the car.

1mrsbs · Oct 19, 2016

My first year as a school nurse I had a KG teacher call me saying she was sending someone. Teacher said that something was in her nose & I asked "Besides her finger" and she said yes. Child came in crying, looked in left nostril and there was something brown. We had wood chips on our playground & I thought for sure that is what it must be. I had child blow while I held the other nostril. The object was visible & I pulled it out. It was a flat rock. I asked her what happened & she said "somebody" put it in her nose. Turns out that "somebody" was her. I will never forget that child's name as long as I live. What is it with kids and their orphus's??? :banghead:

grammy1 · Oct 20, 2016

I'm amazed at the cockroach stories. I also irrigated a cockroach out of a child's ear (many years ago in a peds clinic), and had NEVER heard of that before. I guess it's not as uncommon as I thought!