The Value of Full Body Scans

"Tehva swallowed a marble." My mother's voice is shakey and hesitant as she announces this over the phone. Her voice sounds like what I would imagine a first confession would sound like...reluctant, tripping, frightened.

After she comes out with this, I can't believe my mother is calling me about a marble. For starters, there is nothing I can do about it, as I am off doing a good deed and am a 30-minute drive away. But really my disbelief stems from this: my mother is the woman who raised three children of her own without ever panicking once, not even that one time when my brother set the toilet on fire while cleaning his bike with gasoline. Swallowed marbles are small game compared to combustibles in the plumbing.

Thinking there must be more to this than just a marble, I search for clarification. "She swallowed a marble? Is she still breathing?"

She pauses, perhaps to check, and then returns to our conversation and, I suspect, tries to justify the call. "Yes. Well, I had seen her playing with this BIG marble earlier, putting it in and out of her mouth. Anyhow, I THINK it was a metal marble. And I THINK it was BIG." The marble in my imagination goes from being an innocuous round glass thingy to a gigantic elephant marble. "Actually, it may have been one of the small ones. I'm not sure. Anyhow, Tehva told me it was big." The elephant marble shrinks back down to a little glass marble. "And she thinks it was metal. She said it didn't feel good as it went down so it must have been big." I didn't remind my mother at this point about Tehva's penchant toward high drama, but I should have. "Well, what should I do? Should I take her to the emergency room?"

Take her to the emergency room? I am fairly certain that our catastrophic health insurance does not cover removal of swallowed marbles. What's more, I am POSTIVE that marble extraction is NOT a cheap venture if placed in the hands of doctors. Treatment quite likely entails an x-ray, a laxative, a warning to keep marbles out of our mouths in the future, and a bill for $950. Really, this sounds like a job for Dr. Internet.

I consult with Dr. Internet as soon as I get home. Basically, Dr. Internet advises a disgusting course of treatment with two equally distasteful options.

• Option 1: Feed swallower a high-fiber diet and wait. Ensure the marble has been passed by collecting the swallower's stools in a collander and then rinsing with warm water to eventually reveal the marble. You may have to repeat this process over the course of UP TO FOUR DAYS.


• Option 2: Once again, feed swallower a high-fiber diet and wait. Ensure the marble has been passed by collecting the swallower's stools in a bowl and then, while wearing a plastic bag on your hand, squish up the stuff until you find the marble. As before, you may have to repeat this process over the course of UP TO FOUR DAYS.

And then there is this caveat at the bottom of one of the pages: If the marble is made of metal, or is larger than a small marble, be sure to contact your family health practitioner immediately. There is some confusing explanation afterward about small electrical charges and blocked intestines.

I consider this carefully and wonder how much wiggle room I have on this one. Okay, so the marble in question was probably metal AND was perhaps larger than a small marble. Tehva is not, as far as I can tell, emitting electrical charges. Nor is she complaining of stomach pains, making odd wheezing sounds, or refusing food and water so I decide to play the odds on this one and write her off as okay.

My mom advises her that she should wait 24 hours and, after that amount of time, the marble will come out in her poo. She is fascinated and begins to count the hours immediately.

The next morning Tehva comes out of the bathroom looking relieved. "I pooped," she announces. "And I remembered to flush!"

"Oh, good." So much for poo checking. "Did your marble come out?"

"Yes, it was very clean. It came out. It made a big splash. It was 24 hours."

"Really, did you see it?"

"No, I didn't," Tehva looks at me like I have lost my mind. "I said it was 24 hours. Murmur said it would come out in 24 hours and it has been 24 hours. I know that it came out though because it has been 24 hours."

While I lamented the fact that we may never know whether the marble made it through, Tony pointed out that we will know for sure in six weeks. "We can just put her through the full body scan at the airport. If she sets of the alarms, then we will know that it is still there." I knew those body scans would eventually come in handy for something.