Today was spent at The Hospital.
Not The Hospital whose Emergency Room [1] I dropped The Younger off at. No. That Hospital does not have a pediatric section, so The Younger was transported to a different Hospital during the wee morning hours.
Now, since Spring [2] has already mentioned one reason why he's there [3], I no longer have to dance about the issue of The Younger swallowing two kitchen magnets.
Magnets.
Yes, plural.
Now, as kitchen magnets go, these are tiny. Think of a push pin, one used to tack notices up to a bulletin board, but instead of a metal pin sticking out of it, it has a small round magnet to hold it to a refridgerator. We're talking something about 1/8″–1/4″ across.
And he only swallowed the magnet part, not the push pin part. Just the magnet part.
It was suggested by the doctors last night that The Younger might have pica [4] which is a persistent craving for non-food like items.
Oh, and he also got a stomach flu, as if things weren't bad enough.
So anyway, today was spent at The Hospital.
The Younger was sent through X-ray enough times that he no longer needs a nightlight and the reason for the multiple X-rays throughout the day was to track the movement of the two magnets [5]. The concern was if the two magnets attract each other in different parts of the intestines and lodge themselves against the intestine wall. Fortunately, the X-rays showed that not only where they progressing down his system, but they had already attracted to each other and travelling as one unit if I understood it correctly.
So, once the magnets are flushed from his system, The Younger can then return back home.
[3] http://www.livejournal.com/users/springdew/394438.html
[4] http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/pica.html