My Lucky Penny

In my recollections of the many things I have done over the years there is one story that is a real stand out because not only did it impact the life of a small child it also ultimately had a great impact on myself.

About ten years ago a pretty 35 year old blonde haired woman came in my office with her two-and-a-half year old son. He had a few problems including recurrent ear infections but of additional concern was that he had been having significant gastrointestinal symptoms for over a year. He would have episodes of vomiting that were so severe he would throw up  all of his gastric contents from a meal. The symptoms were odd because they were intermittent.


In children there are a few things we think of when they have swallowing and vomiting symptoms. The problem could be esophageal and if it is the most concerning issue is that it may represent a stricture of congenital origin. Another common cause could be an episode of esophageal trauma from a caustic agent or a foreign body. These causes are usually linked to a specific event and timeline usually esophageal strictures give consistent near daily symptoms. There also are issues that can occur in the stomach such as a narrowing at the gastric junction with the small intestine. These symptoms develop very early, usually around a few months of age and the children have difficulty with weight gain.

In front of me was this cute black haired olive skinned boy who was a little pudgy and normal appearing in every other way. He certainly wasn't wasting away nor was there a specific event that preceded his symptoms. Oddly his symptoms would come in waves sometimes separated by weeks or months. He had seen other doctors including pediatricians and even another ENT doctor without any resolution. He was seeing a speech therapist for his speech delay and she had raised some concern about this. I did a thorough ear, nose and throat exam which was normal except for a pair of functional myringotomy tubes (ear tubes).

Because his symptoms were sporadic I suspected an issue in the stomach  but I was unsure. I ordered a barium swallow examination with the expectation that I would need to send him to a pediatric gastroenterologist once I ruled out an esophageal abnormality. So, you can imagine my surprise when I received an urgent call from the radiologist at Dominican Hospital that there was a penny lodged in his esophagus.

We urgently went to the operating room and I placed a scope into the child's esophagus and after removing old food particle I was able to extract a penny that was so adherent to the lining of the esophagus it had lost some of it's copper coating and was showing the metallic zinc center. The boy did great and went home the next day.

A few days later I received a call from his speech pathologist who happened to be a woman I new from a couple of years previously who had dated a friend of mine. We talked for a bit and again later that evening and learned that we had a lot in common. Shortly after that phone call we got together and realized we also had a mutual attraction for each other.

By now, some of you may realize that this is the story of how my beautiful and wonderful wife and I met and started a life together. So that little penny was truly my "lucky penny".