Tuesday, September 2, 2008

The saga of the quarter! part one

Well on Thursday my adorable almost 4 year old son decided that swallowing a quarter seemed like a good plan. He was with Grandma and ran to her saying his throat hurt. She asked why and he said "I ate moneys" When asked what money he replied "the big one". And the merriment has ensued from there. AJ swallowed a few times and stated "I better now." We of course all met at the emergency room where my son high fived the Dr. , told him he had "monies in my tummy" and laughed when sternly informed he was NOT a piggy bank. He smiled for his xrays and flirted with Everyone! So much for my thought that perhaps a slightly traumatic experience might prevent further such adventures.
The xrays showed that the quarter was in fact in his stomach and we were told that if he didn't pass it in three days to call his doc. for a referral to a pediatric gastroenterologist. This is where we are today. It has been 4.5 days due to the holiday weekend- my son has always had an excellent sense of timing things for the worst possible time- and no quarter. I have a call in to the doc and am waiting on an answer. I don't know what I hope. I read on line that sometimes they make you wait 3 weeks before they give up and put them under and scope them. The concern is that the quarter may be too large to pass into the duoendum (opening to the intestines) This at a time when he is starting a new school and is at 5 different places each week. It seems a bit much to ask new teachers to save his stool to be examined for pocket change. He's so irregular and now prides himself on total bathroom independence that we live in fear that he'll go and flush before we can check. Yikes.
On the positive side, when the er doc heard me explaining that he has Apraxia he immediately referred us to a pediatric neurologist. I was so excited. while everything has been going well on the Apraxia front, it would be reassuring to have him examined by a neurologist and be secure in the knowledge that we are doing everything we should and that there are no other surprises lurking.
He has been stuttering a lot lately which initially concerned me greatly but after reading a great article on this on Apraxia_Kids.org I feel it is likely that he is just overloaded with new abilities and information and needs time to take it all in.
I hope all is well for everyone out there and please say a prayer for silver poop!

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