Strangest items Toronto doctors have removed from children’s passages

Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children shows off safety pins, nails, a toy airplane and a Monopoly piece, all of which have been removed from kids' passages.

When I was about three years old, I stuck a bead up my nose. It got so lodged up there my mom had to come get me from camp and rush me to the doctor.

I don't actually remember it happening, but when I was in my first year of university, my mother took my whole swim team out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. It was a very nice treat because I had only eaten school cafeteria food for the previous two and a half months straight. At the dinner, my mom decided to give my teammates some insight into my early childhood and told them the bead-up-the-nose story.

I was sweating and my heart was racing because I was embarrassed my new teammates were hearing this. But, surprisingly, none of my teammates found it weird or strange. In fact, almost all of them conceded to shoving something up their nose, mouth or ear when they were little.

And the 18 of us that sat around that table are definitely not alone. Some of the objects which have been removed from kids' passages at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children make a bead look like a smart choice.

As shown in a recent Toronto Star article, a framed display near the University Avenue hospital entrance shows 221 "foreign bodies" that have been removed from air and food passages. The collection includes many safety pins, buttons, Toonie-sized coins, decomposing peanuts and a couple of nails. Some of the stranger objects include a toy airplane and a Monopoly piece.

"I've worked in Ottawa, London, Saudi Arabia—they do it all over the world," said Dr. Bruce Minnes, an emergency doctor at the Hospital for Sick Children, to the Star. One time, an X-Ray showed a heart-shaped broach lodged so deep in a kid that it appeared to be right over his heart.

Star columnist Catherine Porter, who wrote the article after her son stuck a Lego man up his nose, guesses hospital staff at one point removed an average of five objects each day and there must be 10 more framed displays of removed "foreign bodies" somewhere.

Director of hospital archives and library Elizabeth Uleryk admits she doesn't know where the other frames are. She guesses the one on display dates back to the 1950s, because many of the coins have King George VI. That's before the advent of disposable diapers, which explains the large number of safety pins.

It seems that, these days, many parents immediately check what the Internet has to say. A quick Yahoo! search for "bead up nose child" reveals more than 14 million results and most of the top results suggest ways to get the bead out.

"It's a common occurrence," reads an eHow post before it explains a trick to removing objects. Identify the nostril, close the other one and ask the child to breath out of his or her nose gently. Hopefully, the object comes out. If not, it suggests going to a doctor.

To prevent such a thing from happening, try to keep all toys that are not appropriate for the child's age out of reach, Baby Center suggests.

The hospital staff in Toronto told the Star nowadays they mostly see beads, peas and small rocks. Incidentally, when my brother was little, his favourite thing to shove in his mouth was small rocks. Luckily, he was always smart enough to spit them out before they became lodged too deep.