The Princess and the Pea

Hello, guest blogger here. My name is Mr Kittenhead, and I had the pleasure of taking princess Kalila Boo Kittenhead into A&E on Wednesday night, to retrieve a nasally inserted legume. It all started when I was at work, earlier in the day...

(wibbley wobbley screen effect indicating a flashback, probably with some harp glissandi)

Yes, I was at work, when I received a phone call from Mrs Kittenhead, to say something to the effect of "Kalila has stuck a pea up her nose, and she won't let me take it out". I suggested that when I got home, we would forcibly remove said vegetable, and there would be Nothing Kalila Could Do, because we were Bigger Than Her.

At around 6.00 (well, OK, 6.20), I arrived home to find the kids in the bath. After a quick hairwash, we dried the kids, and I held Kalila down, whilst Mrs Kittenhead entered her nasal cavity armed with tweezers. Much kicking, flailing and general protestation. Pea remained firmly stuck in place.

Cue usual ritual of brushing teeth, reading story, and putting to bed, whilst Mrs Kittenhead researched our options. Lots of google searches for "pea up nose". Turns out it is very common indeed - lots of people recounting stories of their children inserting peas up their hooters, but not very much advice over what to do about it. The only suggestion we had involved holding one of her nostrils closed, and blowing into her mouth, on the principle that the pea will shoot out of the other nostril. Tried it. Pea stayed put. So, Mrs K then phoned the emergency doctor for advice. "Go to A&E", they said. Surely not, we thought. Time for a second opinion. Phoned BUPA. "Go to A&E", they confirmed. By this stage, Kalila was fast asleep.

Bother.

20 minutes later, Kalila & Daddy were zooming down the road to Addenbrookes hospital. Idly thinking about possible solutions to remove pea, I came up with an idea involving a drinking straw and suction power. Fantastic idea, I thought, but as I had neither a drinking straw or a Dyson to hand, I continued to the hospital. By the time we got to Addenbrookes, Kalila was waking up a little bit. When Kalila is very tired, she is quite different to her normal self. Especially when she also has a pea up her nose. She becomes very quiet and sedate, with big owl eyes, taking everything in. We were ushered in to the children's A&E, which is full of children's books, toys, and a TV showing Fimbles. We were first seen by a nurse, who sounded quite excited that she had a "little secret" about how to get peas out of noses called the "Mummy Kiss". It involved holding one nostril closed and blowing into Kalila's mouth, and... er, the same thing I told you about in the previous paragraph. I remained optimistic, that doing the same thing in a hospital, with a medical professional, might elicit different results to our homegrown effort. It didn't; the pea wasn't going anywhere.

"Oh dear", says Nurse, "I'll go and get a doctor".

We went back to the waiting area, and read some stories. Then I decided to try to get Kalila to sleep. After about 15 minutes, she'd dropped off. Within two minutes, the doctor turned up to try an alternative method. At last, I thought, a professional, armed with the latest in 21st century medical apparatus. She then produced a sort of metal spike thing to poke the pea out with. Now, I was a bit concerned that there would be more screaming kicking and flailing, but I was wrong. It was partially because the doctor was probably more practiced with her metal spike than Mrs Kittenhead was with tweezers. It was partially because Kalila was all sleepy and spaced out. But it was mostly due to a nurse distracting Kalila by blowing bubbles out of an ice cream cone. I'm really impressed with the attention the staff of the children's a&e ward give to looking after their littlies. However, I'm less impressed with their pea-removing skills, as the pea remained stubbornly in place (and actually had possibly retreated further up Kalilas nostril). We were then transferred to Ears Nose & Throat, way across the other side of the hospital.

We were then seen by another doctor, who had a third attempt at removing the pea. This time, Kalila sat on my lap, whilst the doctor used some special springy reverse caliper things to open her nostri widely, and then used another metal spike to try and ensnare the rogue pea. Which he managed on the second attempt. The pea fell out, into my hand, totally intact and unharmed by the trauma. At which point, Kalila tried to pick it up and eat it. However, I'd been instructed to bring the pea home, dead or alive, so that Mrs K could include it on her blog for your entertainment, so I extracted the pea from Kalila's paw, and plopped it into a small bag.

Having a pea removed does strange things to a small child. Where she had been very quiet and subdued, the pea removal seemed to uncork an unstoppable stream of conversation from Kalila. She was very keen to go home and tell Mummy all about the pea. When I told her we were going down in the lift, she protested "no! not down! but I want up!". She was pointing out everything she could see around her, and talking about it, asking questions. We got in the car, and she insisted that Piggy was strapped in to the car seat next to her. Has Mrs Kittenhead mentioned Piggy before? Anyway, in case it matters, this was Other Piggy, not Real Piggy. But Kalila loves all piggies, so she didn't mind.

On the drive home out of the hospital (around 10.15pm), Kalila looked out of the window at the vast Addenbrookes campus, desolate, still, and lit up by industrial halogen streetlights, and said to me "I like it here. It's quiet". And then she stayed awake for the whole drive home, contentedly looking at the night world speed by. I didn't think about it at the time, but she doesn't get to see the night very often. I think she enjoyed it.

When we arrived home, Mummy was standing at the door, armed with a laptop/webcam already recording...