The Littlest Things We Take For Granted – Part One

Warning: This post is long, rambling and just the beginning of a very scary tale. It has been hard for me to write, because thinking about how things could have ended has been too much to face. Please read it and the continuations over the next couple of days. But before you do, check every toy, tool, remote, talking book, flashlight and other battery operated thing in your house to make sure that the batteries are secure. Please. It could mean your child’s life.

I’ve always had fairly healthy kids. Sure, we pass colds around and the occasional stomach flu, but no one ever gets sick sick. I think the worst thing that J ever dealt with was a couple of bouts of bronchitis that required a nebulizer treatment or two, not counting his hernia surgery at 4 months old. The two little ones have never even been sick enough to require antibiotics, much less hospitalization and the only time K has ever even seen the inside of a hospital was from a nursemaid’s elbow incident last year.

Until a few weeks ago. In the middle of May, we went through the most frightening, horrifying experience possible. D swallowed a button battery and it could have easily cost him his life.

All of a sudden, one afternoon, he started clutching his belly and doubling over in tears and whining. At first I thought, ”Oh boy, here comes the stomach flu. I’d better throw on a load of towels.” Only the vomiting never came. The diarrhea I was waiting for? No show. Within an hour or so, my spidey senses started tingling and I called A at work and told him that I thought he needed to come home. Something was wrong with D and we may need to take a trip to the ER. With his reactions, I was totally thinking it was his appendix. Thankfully, he knows that I never, ever ask him to come him when the kids are sick and he took me seriously.

He left and came straight home and nothing had changed. I looked from the puny little boy in my lap to my husband and told him that I didn’t feel good about how he was acting and we needed to get him checked out.

So off we went to the ER, with a whiny little man in the backseat. We got in fairly quickly and he immediately vomited all over the bed in the cubicle that we were put in. I thought to myself, oh crap. We just drug him in to the ER for the freakin’ stomach flu. The doctors decided that he needed to stick around and get checked out though, and thank God they did. The next few hours were a whirlwind that turned into a few days of shock and disbelief.

I sobbed when they papoosed my sweet little angel and held him down to start an IV. I nearly vomited when they did a cath for a urine sample. I held back tears of concern when they pushed all over his little belly with the ultrasound machine. He was so brave for such a little man. He would cry when they hurt him, but was so cooperative and trusting. I wished so much that they were doing all of these things to me, instead.

No one could seem to find a source for the problem and since the regular hospital doesn’t have pediatric specialists on staff, they decided that we needed to take a trip to A.I. Dupont Children’s Hospital, about two hours away. I felt deflated. Wait, he threw up. Isn’t this just the flu? But they couldn’t get a good enough view of his appendix and they really felt the need to rule it out because of the pain.

So hubby headed home to stay with the other boys and within a few more hours, D and I were going for an ambulance ride. As soon as we checked in, we were almost immediately taken back into Xray. He laid on the table and followed the nurse’s directions to a T. As we were walking from the room, the Xray tech grabs my arm and asks if he’d swallowed a coin recently. A coin? No? At least not that I know of. “Look at this” she says, pulling me into the little booth. There, in the center of my baby’s chest, was a perfect, white circle. “Looks like a nickel or a quarter to me” she mused. He was tossed back on the table for a couple more views of the offending object and we were sent back to the room to wait for the doctor.

The concern on the face of the GI doctor that came in the room startled me at first. I mean, it was just a coin. It wasn’t obstructing his breathing. It shouldn’t be so bad to get it out, right? Only the xrays were more telling than I’d known. It likely wasn’t a coin. It looked to be a button battery. A button battery? Where in the world could he have gotten that? It happens more often than you think, but it needs to come out and FAST. Oh ok, so when can we get that done and get out of here? Umm, well. He’s going into surgery as soon as we can get the operating room prepped. We’ll remove it endoscopically and see how much damage was done. Damage??? Wait, what?

You know those little batteries that power small toys, remotes, kids books, or in our case, a headlamp flashlight that never caused a second thought in my mind before? When swallowed and wedged into the soft tissue of the esophagus, they create a current and can leak. This combination can cause burns, ulcerations and perforation of the esophagus. And if left for too long, can cause a child to die.

At this point, he’d been reacting with pain from this battery for nearly 18 hours. Long enough, I found out thanks to Google later, to be fatal.

The doctor reassured me that at this point, they couldn’t see air in his chest so they didn’t think there was a perforation, but if the tissue was weak enough, removing it could cause it to tear a hole in his esophagus. If that happened, they’d have to open him up and surgically repair it and we’d be there for several days, possibly weeks. My heart was in the pit of my stomach. The little boy contentedly watching Cars on the hospital TV, my baby, my cuddler, the sweetest child on the face of the earth, had a stupid piece of metal inside him that was basically a ticking time bomb.

Here I was alone, 2 hours away from my husband, forced to sign the papers that gave these doctors permission to operate. I couldn’t make myself read the section on the possible complications. I had to keep it together. I fought back tears as they gave me the general rundown, nodding at the words I couldn’t hear and trying to drink in the sight of my baby for as long as I could before they wheeled him away.

To be continued…