Two months ago, I started to notice that a less than pleasant smell seemed to be coming from my four year old son, and after a few days, I tracked it down to his nose. Since I started noticing it after a week long cold, I thought that it must be left over from the cold. After a couple of weeks, there was no improvement – in fact, the smell seemed to be getting worse. I started thinking that it must be related to some internal imbalance, perhaps an allergy. I started giving him acidophilus, limiting his wheat intake – hardly any change after a couple of weeks.

Right around that time, about three weeks ago, he came to me and asked me to help him get something out of his ear. It turned out that he had inserted a small round berry-like ball from a bush into his ear, and when I saw how deep into his ear canal it was, I didn’t want to try to take it out and possibly push it further in. So off to the emergency room I went. After five hours there and lots of trauma and pain to my son, the doctor on call finally told me they couldn’t do anything about it, and recommended I see an ENT. The next day, we took him to the ENT, who pretty quickly was able to get it out. My husband asked him about the smell, but ds was so scared after all that had gone on regarding his ear, that he was screaming and the doctor couldn’t look at his nose.

I made a follow up appointment for the next available appointment, which was three weeks later. I was getting increasingly worried about the smell, since nothing seemed to be helping. It started to build up in my mind, and I got more and more anxious worrying about it. Yesterday, the follow up appointment finally arrived. After glancing up his nose with a light, the ENT said, “Hmm, it looks like something is up there.” He soon extracted a huge (stinky) piece of foam! I couldn’t believe that was the source of everything! At least three months ago, he had put some foam up his nose, and I pulled it out with some tweezers and admonished him about it. A few days after that, I pulled out some more that must have been higher up initially, and couldn’t believe that he had put so much in his nose. I am sure that this foam must have been part of the same ‘project’ but cannot figure out how in the world he could have stuffed so much up such a little nose! I am so relieved that it was so easily taken care of, though I hate thinking how much it must have been bothering him, and for so long. It was so far up that I hadn’t been able to see it at all.

The smell disappeared immediately, his nose stopped constantly running, his frequent nosebleeds stopped, and best of all, he is so happy and bouncy again – his old self! He had been very whiny but I couldn’t figure out why – I thought it might have something to do with the new baby. Now I see that it wasn’t something specific that was bothering him, just the constant feeling of irritation inside his nose that must have been disturbing him.

I have never had any other child even once purposely insert anything in an ear or nose, and I think after this, this child won’t be doing it again either! As the saying goes, life is the best teacher!

Avivah