Occasional Oral Peculiar Swallowing

Occasional Oral Peculiar Swallowing is a disease which is characterized by people , young and old, putting things in their mouth and swallowing them....better known as O.O.P.S. At least it should be a real disease. I recently saw a t.v. ad which shows a mischievous child doing many things wrong and the last scene was he and his parents looking at an X-ray of the boy with a diamond ring in his belly...very funny. Haven't we all been there. It is almost inevitable and I thing hard candy is to blame. As children, parents give us this hard piece of something sweet and say "put it in your mouth but don't swallow it." It is a sweet morsel of goodness. Then we find other hard things...coins, buttons, etc.. and we hear "don't put that in your mouth!" Well, don't..that's just a temptation and we've had hard morsels of goodness before so we try it and sometime...OOPS. My youngest contact lens patient was 7 months old and one day mom called and said "he ate it". Not only did he eat it but she had found it while changing the diaper and wanted to know if she should clean it up. I told her it was under warranty and we could return it..defective. I don't hear of adults OOPS'sing very often (unless they are smuggling drugs) but I am sure it happens with an occasional paperclip or just an adventurous person who thinks "I wonder how this would go down." One of my kids swallowed a dime and we waited a few short days and to our amazement when we were watching for results we found two dimes. I was very tempted to start rolling up hundred dollar bills...maybe this was a talent, doubling his money. Anyway, maybe we should be a little more accepting of O.O.P.S. suffers, those inquisitive souls who just wonder what this or that tastes like, who wonder how long it would take to get through the system, because as we have learned.... it really does come out alright... in the end!

Eye will see you later!