{$70 Bead}

Drew collects air soft pellet beads and often finds them on the ground at the park.  He divides them up by color and places them in an egg carton.

A couple of weeks ago, we went on a walk up to our friends house and Drew found a red bead.  He was excited because it was the first shiny red one he had found and was eager to add it to his collection.  Kenny and I didn't think anything of it and we continued on our walk.  We spent some time at our friends house and when we went to leave, Kenny noticed Drew sticking his finger in his ear.  He asked him what he was doing and Drew responded, "I have a bead in my ear."  After more questioning by Kenny, Drew said, "I didn't have any place to put my bead to save it, so I stuck it right  here," as he pointed to the base of his ear.  He went on to say, "It kept rolling out so I pushed it in farther so I wouldn't lose it!"

He was in his soccer uniform, which doesn't have any pockets, so I guess he thought that was the next best place to store his bead until he got home.  Our friend had an otoscope, so we used it to look down Drew's ear and sure enough...a shiny red bead was lodged down in his ear canal.  After we explained to him that you never put anything in your ear, or any other body opening for that matter, we told him we would take him home and get it out.  Kenny had him lie down on our pool table as he tried to flush it out with saline, but it didn't budge.  He then took him down to the vet clinic to get some forceps, but after he looked at it closer he thought it was too close to the ear drum and didn't feel comfortable messing with it.  They were then off to urgent care where the doctor on call was also not successful using forceps to pull it out. We were given a referral to an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor.  I had to pull Drew out of school to take him to the doctor, whose office was an hour away.  We sat there for 2 hours before we were even seen by the doctor.  He came in and spent about a minute trying to suck the bead out with suction and as he stood up and opened the door said, "Well that didn't work, so I am going to schedule him for surgery this week.   You can talk to the nurse to set up a time."  As I let out a nervous giggle I responded, "You're joking right?!"   He wasn't.....I was very annoyed at this point!  I set up the surgery and called Kenny on my way back to town.  He also thought surgery was ridiculous and told me to come back to the vet clinic.  Once at the vet clinic, Drew was told to lay down on the table.  It was quite a sight to see five veterinarian doctors surrounding Drew, looking in his ear all discussing how to get the bead out of Drew's ear!  Talk of using super glue to attach the bead to a catheter was mentioned, but Kenny thought that was risky, so he decided on a surgical vacuum device attached to a small rubber tube.  After a couple of failed attempts he increased the suction power and switched the tip to a small teat canula, and to our amazement and excitement the little bead popped up and out of his ear!!!!!!

Kenny gave the bead to Drew and told him to hold onto it because it was a $70 bead.  After two co-payments, one to the ENT and one to Urgent Care, we ended up using a $2 tube from the Vet hospital.  Hopefully, Drew has learned his lesson and will never stick anything in his ear again!  I'm grateful to have our own trusted and loved Dr. Summers, aka DAD, around, even if he is only a doggy doctor!