Before leaving to get my doctor bag I decided to give her something to do. I instructed her to plug one nostril and blow out the other. She plugged the left and went to work.

I returned. Sadly, due to disuse, my otoscope was not working. My small but very bright flashlight was working, so I tried to see in her nose what was recently in her mouth and should have been under her pillow. Realistically, we shouldn’t just leave something like that up there, and we certainly weren’t going to send her to her first day of school with an unfortunate mismatch of dental concerns and something for the ENT specialist.

Offhandedly I suggested she try the other nostril. At about the time I was realizing my list of options for dento-nasal extraction were extremely limited, a small, white object came rocketing out her nose. It had been in the other nostril all along, the one that felt stuffy. Crisis averted, I tucked her back in with a stern warning not to stick anything in any holes.

She was not amused. I was.