The Googly Eye Event of 2019

It was a lovely fall morning. We were just about to leave our home to go apple picking when little Miss Anika informed me that there was a craft googly eye up her nose. 

“What!? Why?! Are you sure?” was the only response I could manage.

She confidently said “Yes, I stuck it up there and I can feel it and it’s bothering me”. 

After the disbelief had settled in I told her I needed to take a look. I saw nothing. I called Jamie to come home and take a look and he saw nothing. 

I called and spoke with urgent care. They directed me to the emergency room. 

We went to the emergency room. 

The emergency room confirmed that there was in fact a googly eye in Anika’s nose. They tried to get it out a couple of ways. Wasn’t happening. The doctor could then no longer see it. They referred as to an Otolaryngologists (Ear, nose and throat doctor) for the following day. 

The ENT doctor checked it out and located it way up high, wedged in the back of her nose. The doctor was confident he could get it out, but not in his office. He wanted to do it at a hospital, in the operating room with Anika under anesthesia. Although she did phenomenal with the scope in his office (my little wiggle worm stayed more still then I’ve ever seen her while a giant stick like object was stuck up her nose) he had concerns that if she moved at all while he was trying to get it out he could do more damage than good. His biggest concern was it would get pushed back up further and drop down into her airway. Surgery was scheduled for the following day.

The next morning, we checked into the hospital. Anika was treated so well. The staff was unbelievably kind. What could have been a scary and awful experience for her was fun. Hopefully not too fun though because I really do not want to do this again. 

I was reminded how much I love nurses. They are amazing. The doctors were phenomenal too. Both the anesthesiologist, who quickly determined and let us know that “our little girl was going to be a handful when she got older” (in the kindest way possible of course) and the ENT Doctor, who Anika never once hesitated to complete any task he asked of her, because he made everything sound so darn fun. Who wouldn’t want to suck in gas from a mask when you’ve been told it smells like cotton candy and you get to compete to see who can get the most deep breaths in for extra stickers. After she was out he looked at me, told me she did great and that it’s always so much nicer when they play along. 

When they wheeled her back to us and the doctor opened up his hands to show me the googly eye resting on a piece of gauze I cannot explain the level of euphoria that I felt. I screamed something along the lines of “thank God” and probably pretty inappropriately hugged the doctor multiple times. I was just so relieved that this whole ordeal was over. 

When he began to review how the surgery went he said that he was glad he had chosen to do the removal with her sedated in the operating room. The googly eye had slipped back and fallen. It was sitting right near the top of her airway. With her being sedated he was easily able to grab it and remove it. No further explanation was needed for me to understand the seriousness of the situation had this not been the case. 

I thought being a mom had taught me patience, but nothing so far in my life has taught me patience like a foreign object being stuck in my child’s body and people telling me that I have to wait multiple days for it to be taken out. Especially when there is a risk associated. All the mama bear feelings want to say…no yell… “make this happen now”. When I was talking about this with a friend I kept telling her “I just want it out”. I can’t even imagine what it is like to have a child with a serious illness, or even worse something incurable and you can’t do anything to fix it. Jamie mentioned that once while we were sitting and waiting in the hospital room…some kids were here not for self-inflicted easily fixed concerns. I can’t even imagine and my heart goes out to those families.

I’ve always loved this quote,

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Mary Schmich

This was a blindsided idle Tuesday situation. At no point in my brain had I ever imagined that my five and a half year old daughter would put a googly eye up her nose, that the emergency room couldn’t get it out, that the ENT doctor couldn’t get it out, that I’d be walking to the operating room wearing some crazy suit with my sweet girl so they could give her anesthesia to remove this thing, only to have the doctor tell me how close we were to a very, very, scary situation. Talk about putting life into perspective for me. All of this over a googly eye. 

Looking back on all this let me tell you the mommy guilt is high in this situation. There are a million things I wish I could have done different to prevent this from happening in the first place and how things went down after. Looking at things from the big picture I see that everything went the way it needed too. Sometimes things happen for reasons unknown at the time. I’m so happy Anika came to me and told me what she had done. I can see how important it is now when the stakes are low to establish a relationship with her that she trusts us to tell us when things go wrong so when she’s 16 and the situations are higher risk that she will do the same. 

The good news about all of this was everything worked out perfect. She is healthy and fine.  That demon googly eye is out and currently wrapped in gauze in a plastic baggy high up on top of my refrigerator. I’m trying to decide whether to destroy it but smashing it with a hammer and burning the remaining bits or if I want to frame it for her to one day see the trouble this little object caused (let’s be fair it wasn’t really the googly eyes fault, was it?). We’ve made it through this really crappy situation and gotten to the point where we can laugh about it…well kind of…that might take a little bit longer. Anika now has a story to tell when she’s older. She, Jamie and I spent time together just the three of us for the first time in 2 1/2 years (since Jacob was born) and although I would have wished for better circumstances to do this, that in itself was nice.  Anika left the hospital for the most part with no scary feelings toward the place or doctors. I think the only one in this situation who will have PTSD will be me and it’s purely googly eye related. I will never look at those things the same and there is a forever ban on them in our home. Everyone can draw eyes on their crafts from now on.