Wes and I were walking from the new office building in Bellevue to Lunchbox Labs for dinner Wednesday when I received a text message from Michelle “Mila put a bead in her ear!! I can see it but if I try to get it I might push it in further, WTF” – How do you even answer that when it’s 5:30 in the evening and you know it’s a 2-3 hour drive home, and you know momma is home with four kids wondering what to do. – Le sigh. I gave momma a few suggestions, but she was nervous to do much for fear or hitting Mila’s ear drum, and making things worse.

Thing in ear – Thing not in ear

Extraction

Momma did try a few things without luck and was getting close to giving up and heading to an urgent care center down the road a bit. I’m thinking to myself, momma you have four kids and urgent care always takes like 2-4 hour before you’re seen and fixed, and I don’t know if any of our sitters are close enough to be of any help to you I’m doing all of this texting Sitting at Lunch box labs feeling like I’m not much help all. Then momma sent me the above left picture to show what is in Mila’s ear and how far it is in the ear.

The bead has a hole in it, and it’s shallow enough that you’d have to work a bit to hit the ear drum in there. Told momma to make a hook out of something and stick it in the middle of the bead and pull that sucker out. Some minutes later, momma sent me the below image telling me she won and had managed to extract the bead. YEAH!!! I sure are proud of my wife for taking care of business, and of Mila for being patient and helping momma out with the process.

Bead thing after being removed from the ear by our frontier momma.

Sad face

Working 60 miles away from home means situations like this really suck because I can’t just drop what I am doing and run home to help fix things. Luckily, Michelle is a pretty confident adventurous, self-sufficient gal who is always down to give anything a try and power through her issues – Strong resourceful momma makes me happy face.