They came through so fast that I was only able to see the last one saying "There" flash across my phone screen. My phone then rang, but I was already talking on my desk phone to a candidate about an internship. The next text came, and this time I saw it. "Call me!!"
I wondered what was going on, but I had to finish my phone screening before I could call back. As soon as I hung up with the candidate, my phone rang again, and I saw that it was Jamie, so I answered. I could tell Jamie was flustered as she told me we needed to take Dulci to the doctor.
"Something is stuck in her nose," she informed me, adding that it was so far up she was unable to see it. "It's a plastic part of a toy. The horn broke off a My Little Pony, and she put it in her nose. I looked it up, and it's possible it could get into her lungs. I don't know if we need to take her to the ER or her pediatrician or what?"
I hung up with Jamie and called the pediatrician's office. They were booked for the day but wanted us to come to another clinic in the same building to see a nurse practitioner. I scheduled the appointment and realized that my coworkers were laughing when I described the situation over the phone. "It's a piece of a toy. About the size of a grain of rice. No, she's not choking; if she were, we would be calling 911, not you."
I cancelled my afternoon phone screens and emailed my boss to let him know that I had to leave for an unplanned trip to the doctor's office. When I got home, Dulci ran up to the door with her coat on and excitedly shouted, "I get to go to the doctor's office!" Afton was sick from school today, but she was miraculously feeling well enough to come along with Dulci and provide moral support.
We checked in and had a seat in the lobby. Dulci and Afton grabbed matching Pregnancy and Parenthood magazines that they flipped through while I read a book I had brought along. They came to a page advertising nursing bras and began chanting "bras, bras, bras, bras." I encouraged them to look for children's magazines, to which I was informed, "but look, Papa, there are bras."
Thankfully our wait in the lobby was a short one. The nurse called us up to get weighed, measured and taken back to a room. We were informed that we would be meeting with the Nurse Practitioner, Dana, and the grad student, Dina. Dina asked what it was that was in her nose, and I handed her the plastic My Little Pony doll whose broken off horn was allegedly hiding in Dulci's nasal cavity. She asked, "Okay, so is it purple like the rest of the pony?" Afton said, "No, it's lavender."
We settled on mauve.
Dina took a good look and couldn't see anything in either nostril apart from some snot. Dana, the Practitioner, came in and could see nothing but snot as well, so she decided we would try to get Dulci to clear her nose. After about a box and half of kleenex, 6 treatments of saline solution, a suction bulb, and 4 q-tips, the verdict came back inconclusive. "I can see there's nothing in the left nostril, but there's this big mucus blockage in the right one that I can't get clear, and there could be something lodged behind it. I'm going to give the Ear Nose Throat doctor a call, and see what he says."
...so we headed over to the ENT clinic, which thankfully was only about a mile or two away. Upon arrival, I was handed over some paperwork to fill out on Dulci's behalf. The first part asked what brought us in today, and I wrote something along the lines of "Twilight Sparkle's horn is caught in my nose." The same page asked for most recent occupation, to which I put "Princess".
The second half of the paperwork was scantron, like the standardized tests we took in high school, where you have to fill in the bubbles with a #2 pencil. This was obviously not written for a 3-year old, so I filled it out as best as I could. "How often do you use tobacco products?" was fine, because I could just fill in "Never have", but the follow up question "Please select the nearest amount of cigarettes you smoke per day," left no choice for "N/A", so I had to choose the most accurate given the choices, which was "1/2 a pack per day."
We were brought back into the office which looked like a hybrid between a dentist's office and a hair salon. After only a couple minutes, we were met by Rich, the Physician Assistant who would be checking Dulci out. He took a good look and confirmed that the right nostril was too clogged to see. He hooked up a suction machine that he introduced as "Mr. Slurpee" whom was going to "help clean out your boogers." Afton thought it was funny that he said, "boogers", while I pondered about how "Mr. Slurpee" is a rather peculiar name for a piece of medical equipment.
Rich suctioned for a minute or two, then took another look and said, "I don't see a unicorn horn in there but it is really clogged." Afton said, "She didn't put a unicorn horn in there; Twilight Sparkle is an alicorn."
Another minute or two of suctioning, and he saw something, grabbed a pair of forceps, and pulled out what looked like either a crumpled up piece of paper, or the grossest, biggest booger that you can imagine. The object was rancid, causing Rich to gag and say, "That stinks." He checked her nose again and could see that it was perfectly clear.
A nurse put on a pair of gloves and unfolded the foreign object, which opened up to reveal itself as a bandaid. "I don't know how long that's been there," Rich said, "but with the way it smells, it's definitely been there for a while. Certainly longer than just today." Part of me wanted to bring the bandaid home for a scrapbook, or to snap a picture of it, but I thought that would be in bad taste.
I would say there were some major lessons learned today. Dulci learned that it's not okay to stick things in your nose, or you might have to stick more things in your nose, to remove the thing you stuck in your nose. Jamie learned that Dulci's recent bad breath has nothing to do with her toothbrushing capabilities. And Rich learned that a Pegasus is a horse with wings, a Unicorn is a horse with a horn, and an Alicorn is a horse with both wings and a horn.
We still don't know where the horn is.
