WHAT A BALLS UP

WAAAAAA 7:10 this morning my alarm clock went off! Oh no sorry, it wasn't my alarm clock it was Ellis and he was extremely upset.

I got up to investigate, Seb was telling me he had a ball in his ear. A little silver ball from a stupid plastic party bag maze game, how on earth? I asked him if he put the ball there and he swore to me he didn't and it had just rolled in. I couldn't see how that could happen, but duly had a look in his ear in the light. I was unable to see anything, so I reassured him and went back to bed for another hour.

I quizzed him more when I got up, he was adamant that he didn't deliberately put the silver ball in his ear. He demonstrated how he put his head over to one side on his pillow so the ball would roll out. He explained that he was trying to do the maze without looking at it, he wanted to get the ball into the centre, the back came off the game and the ball just rolled into his ear.

At lunch time conversation came back round to this metal ball. I remembered the doctors torch Mag had got from when he was in hospital in January ..... hmm. Well I shone it in his ear and for a very brief moment I 'thought' I saw something and then it was gone. I tried again to see the ball but no luck.

This bugged me, I searched Seb's bed and his room for this little ball, worryingly I couldn't find it anywhere. In the end I made the decision to take him to our minor injuries unit (its sort of like an A&E but for less urgent cases). Still sceptical I got the nurse to have a look in Seb's ear .... well lo and behold there it was! The nurse even let me have a good look in too which was so cool.

A tiny steel balbearing was nestled under seb's grommet (vent) and it wasn't going anywhere. They tried lubricant in there, plus used a rather noisy suction machine too. All of these efforts just made Seb's ear more sore and distressed him further. Further examination revealed that the balbearing had not even budged a millimetre.

So they are arranging for him to see the ENT consultant in the next couple days, I have to ring on Monday morning to find out when. Seb actually has an appointment at the end of August scheduled to get his grommets checked, but they say he cant wait that long as his ear would get infected. So its looking he might need an anaesthetic to get this ball out, I would suspect his grommet will come out too but who knows! I will update on Monday when we get word on what is to happen.

Oh this is not the first time Seb has had a foreign body - here's another time PEGGED.

Another time involved sweetcorn in his nostril which he sniffed up, I had to use a booger sucker to retrieve it.