Fatherhood Reflections XXXVI - A Father's Worst Nightmare

If this doesn't rank as one of the worst possible things a parent should face, I don't know what else can be worse.

So I was lying on the couch yesterday afternoon playing with my iPad as usual. The wifey was in the room sleeping. Both kids were trying to sleep.

Then the boy came out and said he had swallowed a new 50c coin!

WTF?!

He said his throat hurt, so I quickly brought him to the bathroom thinking of making him vomit it out. I told him to dig into his throat to induce vomiting while I did the Heimlich maneuver on him. It didn't work after several tries. Then he said his throat wasn't so painful anymore.

I didn't know what else to do so I quickly went to wake the wifey up.

Even the wifey was in shock with what happened. How on earth can a seven year-old boy swallow a new Singapore 50c coin on his own?!

In the end we went to the internet to search for help and answers.

We will have to wait 2-3 days and see if he passes the coin out in his stool. Other than that there seems to be nothing else we can do. He doesn't seem to have any breathing difficulties and he slept sounly through the night and is still breathing and behaving normally when we dropped him off school.

Geez, I was all worried sick.

Something so simple as playing with a coin in his mouth without us knowing, while he was trying to sleep and then he accidentally swallows it. Imagine if he had gagged and choked and was struggling in bed while his sister was soundly sleeping, his mother was sleeping in the other bedroom, while his father was resting on the sofa in teh living room? No one would help him as he tragically struggled in despair.

What a dreadful thought.

It is important to appreciate everything that we have and every moment that we have. For life and all that we hold dear can just be taken away from any one of us so simply and so suddenly. Like the flick of a switch.

Sigh. I'm still traumatized.

Hopefully the boy gets better and learns better from this so that I can tease him about this for the rest of his adult life.