Beware the Jicama....

We hope everyone had a happy Christmas. Ours was exciting to say the least. We had the family over for Christmas Eve festivities. Lots of fun, food and gifts... Meagan enjoyed all of it, including the jicama and dip. She liked it so much, she packed some away in the side cheek pockets of her mouth, I'm guessing so she could enjoy it later?? We didn't realize she had 'chipmunked' it and set her down to play. A few minutes later she started choking and gagging on it. She swallowed it, we thought, and went on about her monkey business. Later that night she started wheezing and coughing, but was still playful and her usual self. We kept an eye on her overnight and thru the next day (Christmas day) and she was the same- wheezing but normal. We called her doctor, who was out of the office until the 2nd., and urgent care who told us to take her to the ER and have her checked out. There we were told the good news was she would be taken care of, the bad news was she needed to go to UC Davis Children's hospital to have her lungs scoped because nothing was showing up on the xrays and there is no one north of Sacramento capable of performing this procedure on a child this small. So Meagan and I were airlifted to UC Davis and Tom drove down to meet us. She underwent her surgery (scope) and had a small piece of jicama removed from her airway. It was lodged at the top of her right lung, right after where the airway branches into the lungs, blocking about 80% of her airway on the right side. She spent the night in the PICU and was released the next morning. She's doing fine now, still a little sleepy from the anesthesia, but otherwise back to her usual self. The doctors said we caught it before any infection started and there was no sign on pneumonia, so we got lucky all the way around. They sent us home with these fun pictures of her lungs....the jicama is the white blob on the right