"You are not my seed"

My son Joe (who I am considering renaming “Dingus”) started complaining of a bellyache on Monday. He awoke completely fine, played with his brother, ran around, played with his toys. After a few hours, he started crying uncontrollably. My wife kept asking him, “What’s wrong?” and he replied over and over, “I don’t know.” He’s been behaving this way on & off all week long. At times, he acts as though he’s on death’s door. At other times, he’s like the Engergizer Bunny. Weird. On Tuesday evening he started throwing up a little bit. We tried to console him, my wife by telling him, “It’s okay honey, you just have a little bug in your tummy. You’ll be fine in a couple days.” A few minutes later he puked into a bucket and really studied its contents. After a moment he said, “I think I see his wings in there.” His symptoms continued so Donna took him to the doctor on Wednesday. The doc did a full exam, drew blood, the whole schnitzel and concluded he had a virus (I think 90% of medical school is teaching students how to say, “It’s a virus, you’ll be fine in a few days. Drink plenty of fluids and get lots of rest.”). So that’s what we’ve been doing and he seemed to be getting better.

Until this morning.

Out of the blue he began some enthusiastic wailing and tummy-grabbing. Donna started in with the, “What’s wrong? What hurts?” routine and he finally volunteered that he “thinks [he] maybe swallowed one of the shiny balls.” Yep. My braintrust of a child was playing with his Magnetix set on Monday, put one of the magnetic balls in his mouth, and then swallowed it. My wife, after a small (and completely understandable) freak-out said, “Well, let’s call Dr. Sanghvi.” Joe responded by hiding his face behind his hands and saying he didn’t really swallow it. A whole lot of “Did you or didn’t you??” ensued. Finally, Donna called me at the office. She sounded a little bit at the end of her rope. I told her to put Dingus on the phone.

Hi, Daddy.

Hi, Bubba. Listen, you need to tell Daddy… did you swallow the metal ball?

I don’t know.

I need you to think, buddy. Did you swallow the metal ball?

I’m not sure. I think so. I was looking at it and it accidentally went in my mouth.

Okay, well, we need to know so we can tell the doctor.

I don’t want the doctor to cut me open with a big knife to get it out!

Don’t worry, they’ll just take a picture of your tummy and then give you some medicine to make it come out of your booty if it’s still in there.

Okay. Bye.

I told Donna, “Well, looks like he swallowed it. Better call Dr. Sanghvi. Or maybe just hold a piece of metal up against his belly and see if it sticks.”

I just got a call from Donna a few minutes ago. The doc sent them over to the hospital for an X-ray. X-rays have now been completed and we're awaiting the results. Seeing as how the X-ray tech was laughing while looking at it and then said to a co-worker, "You gotta see this..." I'd say it's more likely than not that it's still in there. I’ll update when I hear something.

On the plus side, I can tell my son, "Boy, you've got balls of steel."