Thursday, March 17, 2011

How to Remove Foreign Objects from a Child's Nose at Home

One of the down sides of a child's natural curiosity is that they tend, at some point in their early life, to try to stick something up their nose.  "Hmm, a hole.  Let's see what happens if I fill it.  Hey, it disappeared!"  Raisins, rocks, beans, beads, buttons, cereal, the list is almost endless.  In my daughter's case, it wasn't her fault.
  My husband had plugged her nose bleed with a tight wad of tissue and she inhaled it.   Then she came to us.  My husband thought she was kidding; it was too big to fit into her nose.  She swore she hadn't removed it.  I believed her but it was clearly gone.  What was I going to do?

The prevailing advice is if they can't blow it out, go to the doctor because trying to remove the object with a cotton swab or tweezers could push the object in deeper.  However, when the wad of tissue disappeared up my daughter's nose, I came up with a new tool to avoid a dreaded trip to the emergency room: the NeilMed Sinus Rinse.  Found in most drug stores, this is a squeeze bottle that lets you shoot saline water up one side of the nose, forcing it and anything in it's path, out the other side.   Snot, allergens and, as it turns out, foreign objects stuffed up the nose, all easily come shooting out.  It worked like a charm.

If you try this, please make absolutely sure that you flush the nose starting from the NOT plugged side, so that there is no possibility of moving the object deeper into the nose.


By Cara Eisenberg
Please visit www.caraaboutyou.com for information about Cara's children's books.