2020 has been such a raging dumpster fire for all of us for so long that it almost feels inappropriate to share that, this afternoon, I unexpectedly accomplished a longstanding and deeply meaningful personal goal.

I presented at an Emergency Department with a patient whose ailment was something the ED team we dealt with had never seen before.

I work in healthcare and come from a medical family, so I *know* how rare this is.

I should also point out that everything is fine. The patient has made a full recovery.

However, the excitement of bringing in a unicorn case has NOT worn off.

It all started at about 2pm. The children and I had just come home and the 4 year old found a random finger puppet that we’d made a few weeks ago.

The finger puppet used to be a horse. It is made out of felt. Except for the eyes. The eyes are googly eyes.

The puppet used to have two eyes, but somewhere along the line, it lost an eye. So it was a cyclops horse.

The eye was a bit loose. (Googly eye adhesive isn’t what it was back in the 80s...)

I have been extremely careful/paranoid about chocking hazards in our home lately b/c the baby is now mobile and grabby and has already almost asphyxiated on super soupy baby food, so I’m thinking the odds of him grabbing a tiny toy and turning blue are not low.

So, while scrambling after the baby as he headed toward the staircase () I told the 4yo to stick the googly eye back on the puppet or put it somewhere safe.

When I’d safely retrieved the baby, I turned around as the 4 yo said “Look Mama!” In a voice filled with a combination of glee and self-congratulation.

He was smiling. At first glance, he looked totally normal. Albeit with a gleam in his eye.

And, upon a closer look, a googly eye carefully shoved into the opening of his left nostril.

The googly eye was *exactly* the diameter of my kid’s nose hole. And, as I lunged toward him muttering “What the HELL...” he smiled sweetly and said “I can get it out,” and poked it with his finger.

The googly eye flipped on its diameter, it had been covering the kid’s nostril opening completely-with the eye facing out for maximum 4 year old humour effect.

Now it was suspended delicately from 2 opposite points and hanging vertically, half in and half out of his nose.

I got to his side a second too late. As I spluttered out “Don’t touch it! Breathe through your mouth! I’m getting tweezers,” he instinctively poked it again with a finger and - crucially - inhaled.

With. His. Nose.

As I watched the googly eye disappear up into the 4 year old’s nasal cavity, my first thought was wondering if we still had the baby snot-sucker thing. And if so, where was it? And would its gentle suction be up to the job at hand?

My second thought was that if I couldn’t find the snot-sucker, maybe a turkey baster would do the trick.

By this point, the 4 year old, aware of the severity of the situation, was clutching his nose and cry-screaming. (Based on a sample size of 1, Pandemic-lockdown-stoicism presents uh, unevenly in the under-five set.)

Helpfully, the baby, abandoned on the floor for at least 45 seconds, heard his siblings wails and joined in with gusty solidarity from his perch back on the edge of the stairs (again, goddamnit).

It was at this moment that my spouse walked through the door.

There was nothing in our marriage vows about sticking it out through two screaming children, a pandemic, and craft-supplies-induced aspiration.

But, broadly speaking, this precise moment would fall under the “for poorer” umbrella.

I think we shared a fleeting look, understanding that this would probably be hilarious later, but maybe that is revisionist history.

In any case, he calmed the baby while I carried the 4 year old to the sofa and peered up his nose using my phone’s flashlight as illumination.

The googly eye was nowhere to be seen. And 4 year old’s nostrils are very narrow.

I concluded that the likelihood of successfully extracting the googly eye with tweezers was non-existent due smallness of the host-nostril and the nostril-owner’s complete lack of chill (now writhing about on the sofa and wailing.)

I also remembered that the turkey baster was jettisoned in a Marie Kondo-ish purge a few years ago.

(What about the items that do not spark joy and which you’ve never yet used, but which may be unexpectedly CRUCIAL IN AN EMERGENCY 3 years from now? What do I do with those things, Marie??)

Spouse had un-missable work calls later in the afternoon and an info session from the 4 yo’s school was about to begin that one of us needed to dial-in to... and so off to the @MGHToronto Emergency Department I headed w/ 2 small children.

Mercifully (miraculously?), there was a parking space out front and I’d remembered to grab 4 yo’s health card and masks for both of us.

By this time he had perked up and was expanding on a theory that a doctor would need to vacuum cleaner to suck the googly eye out.

The hungry baby, strapped to my torso in a baby carrier, was head-butting my chest and clawing at my face as I explained to a triage nurse that we were here because the 4 yo had a googly eye up his nose.

Triage nurses are tough as nails. And they have seen EVERYTHING.