Sparky's Scratches Real friends don't care if you're a little different…

Long story, but I have to write it down. I hope it’ll help getting it off my chest.

Last Sunday, while watching the WC Final, Sabine was fiddling with a needle between her braces. When something shocking happened in the game, she took a sharp breath, thus inhaling the needle, which got stuck in her throat.

I went in total panic mode, but after choking a few times, Sabine slowly got her breath back and whispered: calm down!

Yeah, right.

I put her in the car at about 10.30 PM and we rushed off to a nearby hospital (still a 30 min drive, which seemed endless). At the ER they took x-rays, which clearly showed the needle stuck between her gullet and trachea. The ENT specialist was on call, but had to come from Amsterdam and all the time Sabine couldn’t swallow and had to spit her saliva in a mug. Maybe she could have swallowed it, but that hurt her too much.

The ENT specialist arrived and after studying the x-rays and taking a look into Sabine’s throat he concluded that this could only be solved by surgery. Something he would have done gladly, but the hospital didn’t have a children’s IC at night (it was 1 AM by that time), and because she would have to be under general anaesthesia, the risk was too big.

He called a nearby hospital and arranged an appointment at the ER with their ENT specialist.

Sabine went there by ambulance, I got in the car and managed to reach the hospital. Not after driving in a totally wrong direction, ending up on the ambulance gate, where no public cars are allowed. TG the guard understood the stress I was in and guided me to the hospital’s parking garage. Rink joined us shortly after that. He had to work that night and had to find someone to take his place so he could be with us.

At this ER they took more x-rays to see if the needle had moved. They were afraid that it would go down her trachea and then puncture her lung or move down her gullet and enter her stomach – both cases would’ve asked for some serious surgery. The needle had moved a bit, but was still in the ‘safe’ zone.

The ENT specialist put a flexible tube with a light through one of Sabine’s nostrils, to see if she could locate the needle. The tube irritated Sabine’s nose and she had to sneeze! This is the only time she cried during the whole situation. She was such a brave girl. She told me afterwards: I said it didn’t hurt, because I didn’t want to worry you. But it actually hurt a lot (bless her).

Finally they decided to schedule surgery at 7 AM (at that point it was 3 AM, which meant another 4 hours waiting). She was brought to a private room at the children’s ward, where a sweeter-than-sweet nurse took her under her wings and promised us to take good care of her. We went home at 4.30 AM to take a shower and try to sleep a bit. At 5.30 I dozed off on the couch, woke up several times and finally called the hospital around 7.30 AM.

The nurse told us that Sabine was brought to the operation room indeed, only to find that someone made a mistake with the schedule, and they brought Sabine back to the ward again. As the surgery now was planned for 9.30 AM, we rushed to be with Sabine. She was a bit feverish and in a lot of pain, but couldn’t wait to get the darn thing out.

The surgery itself took about 45 min. Sabine later told us that she thought it took a long time to put her to sleep – not sure if that’s true but at least it felt like that to her.

They put two flexible tubes in her throat, one with a light and the other with some sort of grabber/magnet and a ‘vacuum cleaner’ which sucked the needle out of her flesh and onto the magnet. Then they manoeuvred the needle up through her throat and out of her mouth.

After an hour she was brought to the recovery room and half an hour later she was back at the ward. A bit drowsy but feeling so much better now the needle was out and no longer causing pain.

All went well that day and once she ate and drank something and went to the toilet she was allowed to go home, at 2.30 PM.

That was two days ago and she is doing fine. Stiff, all her muscles hurt, but that’s because of the stress. Her throat still hurts when she swallows, but that’s because of the tubes they brought in and the irritation caused by the needle.

Everything is behind us, but I can’t even bear to think about what might have happened. Nothing did happen and she’s doing fine. I have to look forward and not look back, but that’s hard.

There haven’t been many occasions where I felt such panic as I did Sunday night. I really thought she would die.

Apparently Sabine thought the same. She mentions the incident several times a day, out of the blue. Which indicates that she’s coping with it in her own way. She talks about it when she feels like it and thinks about it during the rest of the day.

Yesterday, when she went to bed, she gave me a huge hug and a kiss and said: “Mommy, I never realized how much I love you. Not until I thought I was dying and would never see you again. Thank you for taking care of me and sitting next to my bed when I needed you most”.

I’m over-emotional ever since it happened and cried a lot. I’m not putting up a brave face, but let my tears run when they come up – and that’s often. Determined to deal with it and not put it away before I feel I can handle it.

Posted in Blog by Antoinette at Thursday, July 15th, 2010
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