Making a statement

Football really isn’t Kelsey Oudshoorn’s game; volleyball is. But the other day, the 15 year old was waiting, football in hand, to meet Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman at Children’s. The two Dallas Cowboys icons shook her hand and autographed her ball, which she bought especially for the occasion.

Kelsey, a patient in the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, got to meet the Hall of Fame quarterbacks at a special photo shoot for the children who will participate in the 23rd annual Beyond the Rainbow Luncheon and Fashion Show hosted by the Children’s Cancer Fund.

Proceeds benefit Children’s
Proceeds from the April 15 luncheon and fashion show benefit pediatric cancer research. The fundraiser is expected to net $270,000 for Children’s and UT Southwestern Medical Center. The photos taken with Aikman and Staubach at Children’s will be used as part of a book of art created by children with cancer.

Staubach and Aikman are honorary co-chairs of the annual luncheon and come to Children’s each year for a photo opportunity with the children who will appear in the fashion show.

The fashion show features childhood cancer survivors and those still in treatment, and remembers those who have lost their fight with the disease. Kelsey finished chemotherapy for alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma on Valentine’s Day at Children’s at Legacy in Plano. Her type of cancer is an especially aggressive form of the soft tissue sarcomas that can occur in children.



Red shows her personality
It’s fitting that Kelsey finished her chemo on a day that’s symbolized by red. For the photo shoot with Roger and Troy, Kelsey wore a bright red fedora decorated with a white fabric rose. She accessorized the hat with a long white scarf emblazoned with flowers, a flowered top, and bright red high-top sneakers.

Kelsey says she picked her hat “because it’s bold, and we were asked to dress like our personality.” Red’s not her favorite color, purple is, “but I like the statement.” With a sense of self and of style like that, Kelsey is bound to wow them at the fashion show.

Our experience with bulimia

Editor's note: This is part two of a two-part series offering an inside look into bulimia. This part was written by the father and stepmother of the author of "A thirty-something's battle with bulimia." The family's names have been changed.

The thing I remember most about that time was Jessica’s anger. Long before I realized she was bulimic, her rage was remarkable.

Keep in mind that there are so many very wonderful aspects to Jessica’s personality and character. Perhaps the most obvious one as a child was her sense of justice. Jessica was always quite small and, even though she was always taught to be kind, I never was more proud of her than the time I discovered she had punched a huge boy at her elementary school because he was bullying a friend of hers.

She has always been very determined, and self-motivated. And she is a wonderful writer, all of which is to say that, where bulimia is concerned, bad things do indeed happen to good people.

When Jessica was 8, her mom and I divorced. I know the divorce was a traumatic event in her life but at the time, I didn’t see any obvious manifestations of it. Again, all I can recall about this period of time is that she had a bad temper.

When Jessica was 14, she came to live with her stepmom, Sheryl, and me. Sheryl had become pregnant. When Jessica moved in, she seemed to be excited about the idea of having a little sister. But a comment she made later about her being sorry to upset our "little family" — meaning me, Sheryl and the new baby – made me think she felt alienated. It could have just been her striking out, looking for something hurtful to say, but the comment was made, nonetheless. I know now that bulimia is about control and I feel certain that her living arrangements were a part of her life that frustrated Jessica and that she felt helpless to do anything about.

She seemed to be happy at her new school. She found friends and became a cheerleader. She always made good grades, and we would remark to one another about how much self-discipline she had about her schoolwork. We never had to ask her if she’d done her schoolwork, she just did it – right after dinner, secluded in her upstairs bedroom.

During this time, Sheryl told me that Jessica was becoming angrier and angrier. I guess I didn’t believe it was anything more than teenage angst, until I saw firsthand some of her angry episodes. When Sheryl suggested getting her some counseling, I finally sat down and talked to Jessica. She told me she hated everyone and could not stand to have anyone touch her. She said she knew she needed help and that "it can’t go on like this."

The psychiatrist we took her to prescribed an antidepressant. Unfortunately, Jessica wouldn’t take it on a regular basis. The therapist said this was typical for teenagers. He told us that she was depressed and that in teenagers, one of the major symptoms of depression is anger.

Eventually Jessica graduated from high school. We had apparently weathered the storm and thought things were pretty good.

Jessica was very bright and had no problem getting accepted to a college seven hours away from where we lived. Like most kids, she thought she wanted to get as far away from home as possible. In school, she was, of course, about as far away from Dallas as she could get and still be in a state-supported university.

She seemed to do well at college. Phone calls and visits home revealed nothing out of the ordinary. She joined a sorority, got a job and made excellent grades. Then, during her sophomore year, things started to fall apart. She called me in tears one time and told me that everything was disintegrating. I don’t remember the details of the conversation, but it seemed obvious to me that she was screaming out for help. I told her to pack her bags and come home so we could get her the intense help she needed.

Jessica sat out for a semester. She got the care she needed on an in-patient basis with continuing counseling after she was discharged. During this time I accompanied her to a visit with her counselor. At the time, Jessica’s physical build was normal, if not a bit on the thin side. I was astonished to hear that she thought she was too fat and needed to lose some weight. The counselor told me that that was an indication of her distorted sense of herself.

In retrospect, we should have gotten Jessica help sooner for her anger. I also trace a lot of the problems back to the divorce. Regardless of how resilient they appear on the outside, I think all children need professional guidance to get them through such a traumatic experience.

Today, Jessica is married to a loving husband. They have children. Her problems with bulimia seem to be far behind, but I suspect she still, to some small degree, silently fights the battle.

A thirty-something’s battle with bulimia

Editor’s note: In this two-part series, a Dallas family gives an inside look into the world of a bulimic. First, the daughter, now in her thirties, talks about the things in her life that led up to her eating disorder. Tomorrow, her father will share his perspective on how he learned about his daughter’s bulimia and how he helped her through it.

If you suspect your child is having trouble with an eating disorder or seems distressed or depressed, please talk to your pediatrician about your concerns.

There’s no way I can describe bulimia in a way that will make anyone understand. Anyone other than a fellow bulimic.

I know, intellectually, how disgusting it is to think of sticking your finger down your throat and making yourself throw up. But to me, there is something comforting in the act of doing so. It makes me feel like I’m taking care of myself. See what I mean? If you’re not bulimic, this is not going to make sense to you. But I will try to explain it.

How I became a bulimic

Something happened when my parents got divorced. I will never understand how a divorce like the one my parents went through translates into me becoming bulimic, but I believe that was the start of something screwy in my life.

Their divorce was amicable. It happened when I was 8. The moving trucks came to our house just a few days after I finished second grade. I remember sitting on the brick fence around our house, under a mimosa tree, watching moving guys loading furniture into moving vans.

I’m not saying that my bulimia is my parents’ fault. It’s no one’s fault but my own. They never made me eat entire boxes of Frosted Mini Wheats and then forced me to throw up. But somehow, I just didn’t handle their divorce and their subsequent dating and remarrying well. The bulimia didn’t even kick in until I was in college.

Building self-hatred

Maybe it was the moving around. I moved back and forth between my parents three times before I finally went off to college. I lived with Parent A and the alcoholic step-parent for a year or so. I lived with Parent B and my new wonderful other step-parent for a year. Then back with Parent A for four years. Then back with Parent B for three years.

During this time, an impossible amount of rage was building inside. I had good, close friends, but I hated everyone else. Especially myself. By my senior year, I often envisioned myself as two people. One version would lie on the ground so the other version could kick me and beat me up for being so ugly and such a horrible person.

My freshman year in college was fun and horrifying at the same time. I went to a university seven hours away from home. I went through rush and joined a sorority, where I felt so out of place. These girls were confident and beautiful and classy. I was small and ugly and had no social graces whatsoever. They formed immediate friendships with each other. I made a few friends but was petrified to show my true self to anyone. Up to this point in my life, I loathed every part of who I was, so it was hard to try to reach out and let other people get to know me.

Losing control

I remember the first time I made myself throw up. Or tried to. At first, it’s really hard to do. My stomach didn’t know what to do the first time I tried it, so I just gagged a bunch but didn’t throw up. Just like anything in life, practice makes perfect.

It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at college. I was living at a camp in the Hill Country of Texas. I was a camp counselor. I had 12 or so 8- to 9-year-old girls in my cabin. It was a sports camp where campers could choose from a dozen or so sports that they wanted to participate in. I was the cheerleading and gymnastics coach. Over a two-week period, I taught one simple, short cheer. I was so depressed, I wasn’t motivated to get out of bed and teach cheers.

While I was at camp, my mother was in a car accident. My grandfather, who I loved very much, died. As I was leaving the camp to go to my grandfather’s funeral, I got in a terrible car accident. During my grandfather’s funeral, when family members and friends brought all kinds of food, I gorged on everything I could get my hands on. This was the way I dealt with the stress of death and car accidents and deep self-loathing.

What it feels like to throw-up

When I returned to camp, the binging continued. On disgusting, rubbery chicken breasts and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and graham crackers and chocolates. After a week or two of doing this, I realized I was out of control and had to stop eating this way. But I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. So instead, I went into a restroom during a break in my day and I tried to make myself throw up.

I wasn’t successful at first, but after three or four episodes, I started to get good at it.

When my sophomore year started, the binging and purging continued. I would eat to ease the stress and then throw-up to relieve the pressure and swelling in my stomach from all the food. The feeling I would get after throwing up was sheer relief.

If you are a runner, you’ve probably experienced this feeling. You know when you finish a really great run where you’ve worked your body out hard and you have an endorphin rush? That’s the same feeling I’d get after eating and throwing up.

The beginning of the end

Several weeks in to my sophomore year of college, I realized that I needed help. I felt isolated and friendless at college. I hated myself more than words could say, and I was so fat, I couldn’t bear to look at myself. (Looking back, I was probably not more than 10 or so pounds past a normal weight for my height).

I called my parents and told them what was going on. I withdrew from school and moved home (with Parent B and wonderful step-parent). I got into inpatient therapy. I got a job for the rest of the semester. When the new semester started, I transferred to a different university that was much closer to home.
At my new university, I found a psychologist who ran group therapy sessions with other students who had eating disorders. I began taking an antidepressant. I began a long series of one-on-one counseling sessions with a therapist.

The therapy and medication helped, but nothing eased my self-hatred more than binging and throwing up. I continued to binge and purge throughout college and my early twenties, despite therapy and medication.

One therapist suggested that I put a sticker on a calendar for every day that I didn’t make myself throw up. I’d get through a week or two or three and rack up all these stickers. I used those little metallic star stickers that come in green, red, silver and gold. The same ones elementary school teachers use to slap on test papers when a student got a good grade. My coworkers would see the stickers in my Day Runner and ask what they were for. I’d tell them the truth about my bulimia. I felt like keeping my eating disorder a secret made it dark and made me feel isolated.

Telling other people about it ended up being helpful to me. The success made me realize that I could, possibly, break my cycle. When I didn’t earn a star sticker, I saw it as a road bump—not a complete unraveling of all the good work I had done previously.

The acts of reaching out to my parents for help, group therapy, individual therapy, putting stickers in a calendar and being open with people was the magic combination for me. I don’t know how other women (and men) make it through.

A never-ending battle

But the work’s not finished. I remember the last time I made myself throw up. I was in my early thirties and during a time when I was feeling out of control. I only did it once or twice before it hit me just how badly I didn’t want to get back in that cycle again. I stopped myself before it got too far.

I think bulimia will always be with me. I will always obsess about how many calories I’m eating each day and how much I’m working out. I despise hearing family members (especially those who know about my bulimia) talk about their low-carb diets and tummy tucks and such. I try not to make a big deal out of it, but my heart starts racing when the subject comes up.

I am blessed, though. I have a supportive husband who knows about the bulimia. I have children now, and I do everything I can to make sure they have consistency and stability in their lives. I realize that any traumatic experiences they go through as children will likely manifest itself in a way that may not come to light until they are much older. I do the best I can to make sure they know they are loved and know that they can always come to me when they are upset or depressed. I just want them to be happy with themselves.

Children's in the News

Children's is regularly featured in the news for a variety of reasons, and we had a few stories come out this week that we wanted to share.

Transplant patient on Today Show tomorrow
Lyndon Baty has been a patient at Children's since he was 3. The 15-year-old from Knox City, Texas, spent nearly all of last summer here after his body showed signs of rejecting the kidney transplant he received here in 2003.
The Nephrology staff at Children's was able to stabilize Lyndon's condition, but his immune system was so compromised that he couldn't go to school this year. This was especially troubling for Lyndon because - as his mom, Sheri, says - "he loves the spotlight."
"Lyndon loves being around his friends," Sheri said. "He has really missed that. The illness and dealing with rejection has been really difficult, but I think what has been most difficult on him is missing out on the social interaction."
But that all changed at the beginning of this semester when Lyndon's school district was able to arrange for Lyndon to remotely attend school through a robot - as shown in the video at the bottom of this Huffington Post article.
"He still can't go to school with his friends physically, but this little robot has provided such an amazing outlet for him," Sheri said. "Since then, his appetite has been better. He's been more upbeat. It's been amazing to see the difference."
News outlets across the country have picked up on Lyndon's story, and he will even be featured on The Today Show on NBC at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. Watch his interview if you get the chance!

Stroke study making national headlines
Nearly 2,000 news outlets have recently featured new critical stroke initiatives that were launched at Children's to diagnose and treat strokes in children.
Pediatric stroke is a little-known condition that occurs as often as leukemia and brain tumors but often is not recognized by parents or physicians, despite the serious short- and long-term health consequences. As part of this effort, Children’s plans to start one of four research sites in North America participating in this groundbreaking research.
“Pediatric stroke research is in its infancy,” said Dr. Michael Dowling, medical director of Children’s Pediatric Stroke Program. “We’ve simply got to find out why children suffer strokes.”
You can read more about the initiative in this Boston Globe online article.

CCBD patient inspiring others
Fourteen-year-old Payton Agnew loves to make jewelry and wants to be a doctor when she grows up. Last June, Payton underwent a bone marrow transplant at Children’s to treat T-cell lymphoma and is currently in the intensive care unit battling her disease.
Learn how Payton has inspired her entire elementary school to join in her effort to fight cancer in this WFAA news clip that ran this week.

Plano boy gives little brother life-saving transplant

Editor’s Note: When Jude Cobler, 6, of Plano, was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in August 2010, the diagnosis was difficult for his family to accept. It was harder still when traditional therapies failed. In October 2010, the Cobler family learned that Jude would need a bone marrow transplant.

This procedure would rid Jude of his own unhealthy blood cells and replace them with healthy blood-forming cells from a donor. But finding a donor can be difficult, because the recipient and donor’s tissue types must match. There is a 25% chance that a sibling will match.

Thankfully, this was the case for Jude. His older brother, Joshua, 12, was a match. On December 23, 2010, Joshua donated his bone marrow to Jude. Here, Joshua describes what it was like donating marrow to his little brother.

The donation
The bone marrow procedure was today. I lay in the soft hospital bed wearing a hospital gown completely relaxed. If I were not under the influence of the calming medicine, there is no way I would’ve been able to sit still. They rolled me down to the transplant room.

The actual procedure began after I was unconscious from general anesthesia. The doctor made two small incisions on the skin over the hip bone and inserted a special hollow needle/syringe into these incisions. The needle is inserted through these incisions at various angles and draw out the bone marrow. The marrow itself looks exactly the same as blood. Gauze and stretchy tape were then placed over the wound.

The aftermath
I felt exactly three seconds pass before a nurse woke me up in the recovery area. I was in the worst pain I’ve ever felt. (Then again, I’ve never truly been in pain before). After what felt like two minutes, but was probably much longer, she told me I met the requirements to go home. They took me upstairs by wheelchair to Jude’s room. He enthusiastically screamed my name and asked if I was all right. I limped over to the couch where I lied down and groaned. The pain was now less severe but it still hurt. (It wasn’t sore yet. It was just pure pain).

Seeing Jude againThey hooked up Jude’s central line to the bag of my marrow, his second life. I hobbled over to Jude as I told him that I loved him. He told me that he loved me. But, it meant more than that. Much more “It wasn’t just a little “I love you,” it was an “I’d do anything for you because I love you.”

I still secretly cry when I get off the phone with Jude. But, they’re no longer tears of pain and misery. They’re tears of hope. I’ve cried enough, but the tears still keep flowing out. I will never forget how much pain I went through, I will never forget how many tears I cried through these five months. I will never forget Jude’s resolution to become a “leukemia doctor” and how I promised I would become a pediatric oncologist in Jude’s honor.

But, I will never ever forget how I gave my brother a new chance at life this Christmas.

Maybe it’s strange for me to say I’m not scared at all, but I just know he’ll be all right. He has to be. But, no matter how much pain I go through, how much I hurt, how many times I cry when I’m alone, I will never forget his beautiful smile.

Editor’s Note: Two months after the procedure, here’s what Joshua had to say.
The bone marrow transplant doesn’t really cause any problems in my life. All I have to do is take iron pills every day for the next month or two.

Would I do it all over again? Of course I would. About two hours of pain for a chance to save someone’s life is worth it. So many people need bone marrow donors to make this lifesaving procedure possible.

So, I challenge you to become a donor and give someone else a chance for life. Someone out there needs you. You have the power to save a life.

How you can help
Children’s will play the role of matchmaker this Valentine’s Day, and we want you to help. On any given day, there are some 10,000 people waiting on a bone marrow transplant, including three patients at Children’s. However, 70% of patients who need a transplant don’t have a suitable donor in the family.

On Monday, Feb. 14, 2011, Children's Medical Center hosts the Be The Match bone Marrow Donor Drive from 9 a.m.to 7 p.m. And you can join the registry for free. All it takes to get registered and potentially save a life is a cotton swab of the mouth to determine your tissue type.

The registry is open to healthy people between the ages of 18 and 60, and there is a distinct need for ethnic and racial minorities, who are under-represented on the registry. Because tissue type is inherited, patients are most likely to match someone of their same race and ethnicity, and there is a 25% chance that an immediate family member will match. Learn more at http://www.childrens.com/.

A Real-life Ralphie

If you have ever seen “A Christmas Story,” you know the line “You’ll shoot your eye out.” Nearly every authority figure in the movie says it over and over again to the main character, a fourth-grade boy named Ralphie who wants a BB gun for Christmas. Ralphie ends up getting his wish and actually does shoot himself in the eye when a BB ricochets off of a metal target.

Since the movie is a comedy, it would be easy to dismiss the incident as contrived. But 9-year-old Lane Foreman of Eustace, Texas, knows better.

“I know it really happens,” he said. “Because it nearly happened to me.”

Lane was playing with a BB gun over the holidays when one of his shots ricocheted off of a tree stump and hit him in the right eye. His family rushed him to a nearby emergency room, but his injury looked so bad that the staff decided he needed to be seen by pediatric trauma specialists. So, they referred him to Children’s.

“I thought he was going to lose his eye,” Lane’s mother, Tammy Foreman, said. “I thought he was going to be blind.”

Treat BB guns like ‘real’ gunsStories like Lane’s fortunately don't happen every day at Children’s. In 2010, there were 15 patients admitted to our Trauma service for gun-related incidents. Out of those 15, six involved BB guns.

However, Claudia Romo, the program manager for Injury Prevention at Children’s, still thinks parents should be especially cautious with allowing their children to use BB guns.

“All BB guns aren’t the same,” Romo said. “Some are more powerful than others. And young children lack the developmental and coordination skills to assess danger and handle some of these powerful guns.”

Romo said that she advises parents not to buy BB guns for children younger than 14 but also understands that some parents will anyway.

"If parents are still going to buy them, then they should make sure their children wear protective gear like goggles and a vest,” she said. “They should also store the BB guns in gun safes or lockboxes if they have children of different age ranges. Treat them like real guns.”

No permanent damage for Lane
Lucky for Lane, his eyelid caught most of the BB that hit him and prevented permanent damage to his eyeball. He may need future surgery but is expected to completely recover.

The biggest worry he has now is that he misses being at Children’s.

“He told me the other day that he missed the room service and nurses,” Tammy said. “He took a picture with his nurses to show off to his buddies once he got back home.”

Lane is also informally educating other children about gun safety. He’s even using “A Christmas Story” as a teaching tool.

“When we went to a doctor’s office recently, he went up to a little kid and told him that movie is a great example of why you don’t need to be playing with BB guns,” Tammy said.

Talking about tragedies

In light of the recent shooting tragedy in Tucson and the one-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, parents should be prepared to talk to their children about these events.

In fact, First Lady Michelle Obama has penned an eloquent letter to parents that offers some insights into talking with your children about tragedies such as Tucson.

Pete Stavinoha, Ph.D., a child neuropsychologist at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, says these events provide a starting point for discussions with your children. But, these are also subjects that could raise anxieties in children who see the images on TV or hear about them on the radio or the Internet, so it is important to monitor their time listening to, watching and interacting with the news.

Tips for talking to children

Stavinoha suggests parents:

• Listen to children and encourage them to ask questions at their own level of understanding. It’s OK to say you don’t know all the answers. It’s also OK not to overwhelm them with information that they may not understand.


• Pay attention to younger children’s play and drawings. They may give you a clue about what they are feeling or what they know about these tragedies. This may provide the opportunity to talk about it and perhaps clarify their questions.


• Don’t downplay the seriousness of the situation. Especially for older children, it is important to acknowledge the significance of the event.


• Model healthy parental coping during stressful times. This does not mean hiding your feelings, but rather staying aware of your reactions and showing your children how you deal with a tragedy in a healthy manner.


• Participate in activities that help put you and your children back in control of the otherwise disturbing situation such as attending prayer services.


• Seek support from family, friends, church or other social and emotional supports.

If your child is old enough, watch news reports or read the news together to encourage conversation about the topic. PBS has age-appropriate guidelines about how much news children should be watching and what they will understand about the news that are helpful.

Standing for the first time

Fifteen-month-old Mya Saysanam stood for the first time a few weeks ago. I know because I saw it happen while I was interviewing her family.

Although I wouldn't usually pay much attention to the first stand of any child who wasn't my own, this instance struck me as particularly momentous.

Liver experts at Children's diagnosed Mya with acute liver failure when she was 4 months old. The diagnosis shocked her parents.

In the span of a couple of days, they went from thinking she was completely healthy to not knowing if she would live to see her first birthday, much less stand on her own.

"I went numb when I found out," Mya's father, Sye Saysanam, said.

Children's was the best place to come
There is nothing good about that news for any parent, but if there was any bright spot to be found, it was that Mya came to Children's. As the only pediatric liver transplant facility in North Texas, Children's was the only place near Mya's home in Fort Worth that had the staff with the expertise to treat her condition.

And her condition deteriorated quickly. Just a few weeks after her diagnosis, her liver lost the capacity to function on its own. She had to be admitted to Children's until she could get a transplant, and no one knew for sure when that would be - a month, a year or even longer.

"They gave us a pager to alert us when she received a new organ," Sye said. "I couldn't take my eyes off of it."

"We just prayed and prayed and prayed," her mother, Krista Ketnourath, said.

Brief wait leads to permanent memories
The wait fortunately was short. A perfectly sized liver for Mya became available only two weeks after her admission. Drs. Dev Desai and Meelie Debroy took her in for surgery at midnight.

After staying up all night, Mya's parents saw their daughter emerge from surgery at 8 a.m. It was the first time they had ever seen her with a healthy liver.

"I'll always remember the first time she opened her eyes in ICU and they weren't yellow anymore," said Krista. "I always thought she was a beautiful child, but after that, I just thought, 'Oh my gosh, she really is beautiful.'"

And Krista said she will also never forget seeing Mya stand for the first time and what that symbolized.

"Now she has a new life," she said. "Now she's going to grow up."

Cops bring holiday cheer to Children’s

Most of the time when you see a cop, there may be some unpleasant associations. But for kids in the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders (CCBD) at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, that’s definitely not the case: The police are their buddies.
Each year for the past 6 years, members of the Dallas Police Department SWAT Team, and now its Motorcycle unit, have visited the CCBD at the holidays to distribute gifts and visit with the children.
This year, a group of about two dozen police men and police women came bearing gifts and to play games with the kids in the inpatient unit and the outpatient clinic. There was a vigorous game of Jenga™, a battle in air hockey and some Super Mario Brothers™ action going on in the inpatient playroom. The police were as much into the games as the children.
The combined SWAT and Motorcyle teams also donated a new Wii™ Fun Center™ mobile entertainment unit with funds raised from their annual motorcycle ride for charity. That’s the second Fun Center the DPD group has donated. Fun Centers are sponsored by the Starlight Children’s Foundation.
So the next time you see a police man or police woman from Dallas, give ‘em a wave. They may just have brightened up a patient’s holidays at Children’s.

Boy swallows quarter while watching TV

Amie Raney had just walked into the nail salon when she got the phone call from the babysitter that every parent dreads. Amie's 10-year-old son, Lucas, needed emergency help. He had been tapping a quarter on his tooth while watching TV, and he accidentally swallowed it. The quarter was stuck in his airway.

Paramedics rushed Lucas to the closest hospital where pain medication relaxed him enough for the quarter to slide down to his stomach. At that point, it was a waiting game to see if the coin would make its way out on its own. After nearly two weeks, the quarter was still in Lucas' stomach.

When it came time to surgically remove the quarter, Amie and her husband, Lanny, took their son to Children's, a place he knew well. Seven years ago, Lucas was diagnosed with leukemia at the hospital and underwent three years of treatment in the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders there.

The one question on Lucas' mind before surgery was, "will I get to have my quarter back?

Dr. Ashish Patel, GI specialist at Children's, removed the quarter with a tool called the coin grasper and placed it in a container for Lucas to keep.

"Most of the time parents think their child has swallowed a quarter or a silver dollar, and coins all look the same in X-rays," Dr. Patel said. "I go in expecting to find all this money, and I come out with pennies. This time they were right."