Thursday, July 25, 2002
Recently Drew gave me the biggest scare of his life. He was spending some time in his room by himself, as he has begun to do more, just hanging out and playing. He came down a while later, and calmly said to me 'Mommy, is it okay to swallow a nail?' and boy, was I frightened to think of what he had done to himself. It was quite surprising, as he is not at all in the habit of putting small, sharp things in his mouth, let alone swallowing them. In fact, I hadn't known him to do this for many years. But after working on the teen psychiatric unit of a hospital in AZ for many years, I had known the teens to swallow all kinds of sharp, dangerous objects at times for attention. So I wasn't panicking entirely yet. I knew I had better get some info before phoning the ER, so I asked him to draw the size of the nail he swallowed. He sat down and carefully drew a 3/4 in slightly curved line. That morning there was a contractor upstairs working, installing a whole house fan on the second floor ceiling so I was not too surprised he had had access to a nail. I asked him where he had found the nail, thinking he had found it near Kenny, the contractor, and he replied 'on my finger'. Well, unfortunately I did not yet grasp what he was trying to tell me. I wanted to know where it was before he had it in his hands! I must have asked him why the line was curved, and he told me that was because it was curved - it was a fingernail he swallowed! Boy, talk about relief! After my nerves calmed down and I had called John and Jeanne, I was still curious to know why he decided to swallow it, and he explained that it was because he did not want to interrupt playtime!
