The Seven Thousand Dollar Penny

Well I must say that my kids, especially my youngest Maggie Beth, is not going to let there be a dull moment around our house. The last Sunday night in April we come home from church and I am lying on the couch when Maggie walks over to me and says "Mommy... I swallowed a money." I immediately sat up on the couch and begin quizzing her with questions such as "Maggie you swallowed like a nickel, dime..." and she responds "a brown money". At this point she begins to cry that it is hurting, so we headed to the Troy Medical Center emergency room. They begin to observe her breathing and stated that the breathing part was good so she was okay in that area. They sent us to x-ray so they could determine if it had gone through or if it was lodged. She is still crying that it hurts and finally falls asleep just about the time they call us in to do the x-ray. Of course now she is back to crying that it hurts so that just makes us all nervous again. While waiting on the doctor, she goes back to sleep until we are called back to see the doctor. You guessed it.... she is woke up again and this time only to be in worse pain and about to give her mother a heart attack. The doctor comes in and shows us the x-ray and it shows that the penny is lodged in her esophagus. He informs us that it will not pass on, so he is going to send us to Baptist South hospital in Montgomery where she will surgically have it removed. Good thing is he let us take her by car. So we left Troy around 12:10 a.m. arriving at the hospital in Montgomery around 12:40 a.m. When we arrived at the hospital in Montgomery the staff was waiting on her and they took her right on back. Once we got in the back they did another x-ray to make sure that it had not moved during our transfer to Montgomery. Came back to tell us that it had not moved and that the doctor wanted to go ahead and start her I.V. and give her meds to rest until surgery. Around 5:30 a.m. they came from the holding room of surgery to get her and we got to go with her to that room where she met lots of nice nurses and we met the doctor. Around 6:20 a.m. they told us that she was going to surgery and the nurse took us to the waiting room to wait with other friends that had come to stay with us for the night. About 6:35 a.m. the doctor came out and she had Maggie's penny in a clear cup and let us know she was doing great. Once she woke up and talked to them a few minutes we were on our way home. Boy was that a long night and journey and that penny cost us thousands of dollars (well, the insurance company anyway). We just thank God she is okay. Just to leave you with a quote from her on the way home: "mom that penny has germs on it."