life and times of the hollerans

You know all those precautions about choking hazards, not for children under 3…  Willa is only three weeks from her third birthday, so we should be safe, right—that would be a big fat NOPE…

Here’s the basic rundown of a very long, very anxious night at the hospital…

• Willa swallowed a nickel while Jeff was home with them and I was at work.
• He called me, I bolted from work and met them at the doc’s office.
• After an X-ray on which you could see the coin sitting in her throat, we were off to Emerson Hospital.
• We got to Emerson, they told us they can’t remove the coin there and we needed to go to Children’s hospital in Boston.  They didn’t want us to drive her there, fearing the coin could shift and she would stop breathing- so Willa and I took an ambulance ride while Jeff followed in the car.
• We got to Children’s, she was re-x-rayed, and it still hadn’t stated to move down towards her belly (if it had made its own way to her belly, we would have been in the clear and able to wait for it to make it’s own way out… But no…
• So, Willa was off to surgery.  I had to once again watch her fall under anesthesia in the operating room and then lay my baby girl unconscious down on the table and walk out.  She’s had four surgeries now and I can say it is one of the hardest things in the world to do…. I feel so helpless leaving her there.
• But happily within about 45 minutes, the surgeon came out and brought us good news- the coin was out, it was “just a nickel.” We even got the coin to keep- maybe I’ll get a soda with it sometime when I’m low on change…