dr. mom to the rescue

As a parent, I'm finding that you also have to be a bit of a doctor-slash-private investigator to keep your kids healthy. Every so often I *know* something is not quite right with my kids. It takes me awhile to figure it out but thanks to my mom-friends, the inter-webs, and the teachers at our school I FINALLY put all the pieces together and figure out what's wrong. Today was a great case in point. 

Sloane has had a runny nose since November. We thought it was a cold, although she didn't have a fever or any other symptoms. It was cold season, after all, so that seemed obvious. Around this time, she also developed a weird bad-breath thing. No matter how much we brushed her teeth, she had this sweet yet stanky quality to her breath. I did a bunch of online research so when we took her to the pediatrician the first time, we mentioned the symptoms and asked them to test her for early onset diabetes. Test, negative. Antibiotics, prescribed. And things seemed to get better. 

A few weeks later, the runny nose was back with the congestion. The bad breath, back. Maybe worse. Back to the doctor. More antibiotics. Symptoms went away again, and as soon as the antibiotics were done, the symptoms came right back. Off we went to the pediatrician... again. He suggests nasal steroids since we don't want to overdose on the antibiotics, so we squirted stuff up Sloane's nose twice a day and brushed her teeth like 5 times a day to get rid of the epic bad breath. And things got better, for awhile. But a few days after her treatment was over, the toddler bad breath was back along with the stuffy nose and congestion. And we were stumped...At this point we were thinking allergies, chronic halitosis, or diabetes, or worse

On Friday, Sloane's teacher mentioned the 800lb stinky gorilla in the room. Sloane's breath is now the brunt of mockery in the class. Sloane is the "stinky girl." Luckily, our teacher had a relative whose daughter had similar symptoms. The diagnosis? She had shoved something up her nose. Foreign object in the nose = infected = sweet stinky breath = DUH!!! 

After a little online research and a 2-hour visit to Instacare today, yep...little miss Sloane had a "foreign object" lodged WAY up her nose. It was the size of an olive. A really stinky, bloody, gross and disgusting olive. The doctor thought it was some kind of styrofoam thing. Later, Tagg piped up and said it was Playdoh. Really?! This would have been good information to have while we were at the doctor's office instead of his running commentary about how much blood they were sucking out of Sloane's nose.

So, note to all you parents out there. If your kid has a runny nose, bloody nose, stuffy nose, congestion with no cold symptoms plus bad, stinky breath, take them to doctor and ask them to look for a foreign object shoved up their nose! There is probably corn or a cotton ball or a Lego stuck up in there. Or Playdoh.

The least gross, painful, sad, awful photo from our Doctor extraction extravaganza. She was such a brave, courageous littletrooper. But, yeah, this sucked (pun intended). Big time!

So what I'm saying is...this parenting thing is confusing! And hard. And kind of technical. And sometimes you don't figure it out right away and then you feel like an ass for not figuring it out sooner. But I think as long as you're trying and caring and doing your best, you're alright. And I hope nobody else has to see that nasty, gross nasal olive. Ever. So good luck, mamas and dadas everywhere! We'll figure this out.