the extraction...

Mia has been harboring a splinter of unknown composition since Good Friday. It somehow went in so deep and so fast in the sole of her foot, that we couldn't even see it until just the last few days. We took her to the urgent care center the day after it happened. They declined to try to remove it, claiming it would cause so much bleeding that they probably wouldn't be able to see the splinter. They prescribed an antibiotic, though. A few days later, I took her to the children's ER in Raleigh, prepared to insist that they take it out. She was just miserable, and we couldn't even see the point of entry any longer. I was afraid her body would just swallow it up and it would be in there forever. Fortunately, the splinter surfaced between the time we arrived at the ER and when she was actually seen by a medical professional. They applied cream to soften and numb the area, and left us alone - to go find tweezers, I guess. Meanwhile, Mia fell asleep. They held her down, she woke up screaming, and they hurriedly scraped out a few pieces of what they thought was the splinter. But I wasn't totally convinced they got it all. Such a small bit of material was causing that much pain?
So we come home and wait... ... for two more weeks. It bothered her some days and not so much other days. Her foot started shedding layers of dying skin, she would ask me everyday to soak her feet. I think she liked sitting on the counter in my bathroom playing with my lotion and makeup and splashing her feet in the warm sudsy water. This morning, however, I had to take a look at it. Screams and shrieks ensued, although I tried to keep her calm. I had the toenail trimmers ready to pick away at some of the layers of dead skin, but they made an unexpected sound when I tried it, a clicking sound.
When I pulled that splinter out, oh my gracious - it was metal!! About the diameter of a standard staple (like you would use for papers) and almost as long as her foot is thick at that part where it went in, straight in. I had to catch my breath and my stomach turned over several times at the thought of that piercing - impaling - my baby girl's delicate precious little foot. But she was fine and walked away. I think the fact that there was no blood means her body did its job - walled off the foreign object and pushed it out. She is napping now, so I took the liberty of snapping a picture.