Where we were: an Urgent Care rite of passage

Yesterday my daughter wakes up and comes into my room saying, "What should you do if you have a rock in your ear?" as if it was hypothetical. I was all "DO YOU HAVE A ROCK IN YOUR EAR?"

She admitted that yes, she did have a rock in her ear that she had put there the morning before. Before recess at school, before gym class, before we played at the park and went to ballet lessons, before we went roller skating with her school, took a trip to Costco, had a birthday dinner for her brother, and then went to bed. All of that with a rock in her ear. 

That morning she thought she would mention it to me because she couldn’t hear well out of that ear. You know, because she had a rock in it.

I had naively thought she had skipped the rite of passage that involves sticking foreign objects in your ears and nose, but here we were on the way to Urgent Care instead of heading off to school like we should have been. The kids were oddly happy about our change of plans, and I was oddly calm considering that my daughter couldn't hear out of one ear.

The first two medical professionals to look at her ear didn’t see a rock, but I insisted that they flush it. So they did.And, then when that didn't produce anything, I insisted that they check again. And, it was then that they found it, lodged so far inside that no one even saw it the first time. It would need to be manually extracted, which this nurse was kind enough to do.

With a small splash that rock landed in the bowl of water, and you could see the relief on my daughter’s face immediately.

Of course, I asked to keep the cleaned up rock. Some people keep first locks of hair, some keep baby teeth. I keep the rock that my child decided to stick in her ear. I figure it's a good learning tool for all of my kids on what we should never, ever do with rocks… or LEGOS, or erasers, or Barbie shoes, or corn, or any of the other things everyone at Urgent Care helpfully told my kids about while we waited for our rock extraction. 

Apparently, this whole thing was way more common than I had realized, and according to them it's amazing we went 6 years without incident. Is it as common as they say? What have your little darlings stuck in their ears or nose?