Pill in the nose

She barged into the consulting room while I was seeing another patient. I should have told her to walk out, but I saw the apprehension in her eyes and I knew something must be awfully wrong.

I see a lot of funny stuff in my semi-urban located clinic, so I was prepared.

I asked what was wrong, but instead of replying, she pushed her five year old son forward and pointed into his nose. Her son was running fever and she thought about giving him a dose of Paracetamol before coming down to the hospital (was she?). While she went to get a glass of water, she came back only to find that the tablet was missing.

Her five year old son had just “swallowed” or “inhaled” the tablet into his nose. 

I pointed a torch into the nose and there it was, stuck way up into the nose, a white pill.

I opted to dissolve the tablet by introducing some water which should melt the tablet. She said she has to wait for her husband before she could buy the other medications I’m prescribing.  

While we waited, I thought to myself, self-prescribing at home means she couldn’t come to the hospital and now waiting for the husband to come back before buying medications. I thought…maybe she has a story. So I asked, what do you do?

She smiled, looked down, and told me she sells recharge vouchers. Her husband is a public officer. Mother of three, she used to run a Boutique but a year earlier, she had travelled with her husband to CrossRiver for Christmas when she got a call from Lagos. It was a call that had changed her life, a call that had resulted into her being unable to bring her son to the clinic and leading to inhalation of a tablet of Paracetamol. She received a call that her boutique was engulfed in a fire outbreak.

Now, she just returned from the Redemption Camp Crusade for prayers but she’s yet to resume her recharge voucher business. Asked why, she narrated that, two weeks earlier, neighborhood thieves came in the night, tore through the window, sneak in while the whole family was asleep and stole the bag that contains her recharge vouchers.

“Yea, you surely need redemption”

The boy’s nose was stained with thick, white, chalky substance. The Paracetamol had melted out.

I wrote out her son’s prescription and wished her quick redemption.