Learning From a Trip to Urgent Care

When I think of classic father and son bonding moments, a few typical ones spring to mind. Playing catch in the yard, going camping, watching football, going to urgent care to get a foreign object removed from somebody’s ear. Oh, did you not have medically extracting an object from your son’s head on your male bonding bingo card?

A trip to urgent care or the emergency room is inevitable when you have kids. Something is going to happen. It just will. While this was not our family’s first experience taking a kid to urgent care, it was mine. When my oldest daughter was younger she fell off a chair and hit her head on the corner of coffee table. I was good enough in the moment to stop the bleeding, but she asked for mom to take to the doctor. I suppose it was my turn, so getting whatever was in my son’s ear out was all me.

I don’t know how long it was in there. Maybe an hour or so, or maybe all day. It was brought to our attention when his older sister, properly filing her role as middle child, tattled on him right before bedtime that he said he put something in his year. Every so often the tattling child really does come in handy. While I couldn’t care less who took what Lego from who, it really is helpful to have somebody on the inside when one of the three kids is plotting to do something stupid or have caused bodily harm.

My first instinct was to take a DIY approach. Every parent has their strengths and weaknesses, and removing things from my children has definitely been a strength of mine over the years. But who would have thought the tick in my daughter’s head would be much more difficult than whatever it was that my son shoved in his ear. At this point, it was unidentified. According to him, it was a “white ball.” While my son may have a pretty sizable noggin, I was pretty sure he didn’t shove a golf ball or a baseball in there – the only things in the house that I could think of that would be a white ball. I took a look to see what was in there and did see a white obstruction.

While I got the tweezers, my wife started looking up how to get things out of a kid’s ear. The object was right there to be grabbed, not shoved completely far back in his ear, so surely I could tweeze it on out of there. However, no luck. A few tries and I think all I did was push it back a little further. Right as I was giving up, my wife announced that the first step in object removal was to not try to get it out with tweezers. Well, shit.

To urgent care we went. In pretty good spirits I must say. The little guy wasn’t scared or in pain, more curious about what was going to happen. Luckily there was nobody else there so the wait was short and we were back in the exam room quickly. Upon telling them that my son shoved something in his left ear and we weren’t sure what, I simultaneously felt that this was probably something they hear all the time, and that they also judge my parenting ability. Kids shove stuff in themselves, it happens. But I think it was the not knowing what it was that bothered me. Clearly I wasn’t paying any attention to him when it happened. A kid shoves a pea up their nose at dinner, that’s kids being kids. An unsupervised four year-old shoves some random object he found on the floor in his ear, that’s half-ass parenting. Poor vacuuming to say the least.

Armed with no more detail than unidentified white object in his left year, the medical experts sprung into action and examined his right ear. At first I thought maybe they were looking at both just to be thorough.

“I don’t see anything in there,” the assistant said.

“Left ear,” I reminded her. Our less than stellar start didn’t get much better.

They tried fancier tweezers than I had at home, but with the same results. They tried a tiny little pressure washer attachment for a squirt bottle, which moved it around but not out. They tried the less than highly scientific approach of a dollop of glue on the end of a little slick. I forgot to ask my wife where glue on a stick ranked on the list of things to do or not do at home to get something out an ear. Probably not high.

After about half hour of the doctor trying to get it out while my son stared daggers through her, they gave up. I have to say, my son did great. He sat still, he didn’t flinch or cry or tell them to get the glue on a stick away from him. This created a weird sense of pride in me. He behaved exactly the way I’d want him to. If this was a normal trip to the doctors, we would absolutely stop at the bakery on the way home for a doughnut. However, the little dingus did this to himself. No bonus points for behaving well in the annoying situation you put yourself in. His only reward was an appointment with an ear, nose, and throat specialist the next day. I let him know I was proud of how he behaved and that he was very brave, but also made sure he knew that he should never put anything in his ear again. I now realize that I didn’t mention anything about noses. I wonder if I can preemptively get on the ENT’s schedule?

We went home discouraged and a little confused. Is it safe for him to go to bed with something in his ear? What if he rolls around in his sleep and it sinks deeper in there? What if he itches something and pushes it farther in and it would just be in there forever? Someday he’ll be an old man telling tales of his trick ear that still has something in it. Like an old war vet with shrapnel in his leg, but way less honorable and way more doofusy.

My wife took him to his second appointment, but I heard it was pretty much the same. Multiple attempts and multiple tools, but they must have had better tools because this time they were successful. They removed a little broken of piece of styrofoam from his ear. A fragment from a larger piece my kids were drawing on and playing with a few weeks ago. Please excuse my while I go vacuum my basement.

This time his behavior was rewarded. One doctors appointment was enough to teach him about the repercussions of his decisions. Good behavior at a second appointment warranted a treat. He was brave through the whole thing, and didn’t seem too upset about having to spend the night with debris in his ear. Seems like a good balance of using bad choices as teachable moments and using positive reinforcement to encourage more good. The yin and the yang of parenting in one little ear. Hopefully it won’t immediately go out the other.