It was December 2015, my second son was playing with colored cotton balls and I thought I saw him putting one small cotton ball in one of his nostrils (he was 1 year+ at that time). We saw something red in his nose but we weren’t 100% sure because the inside of a nose is usually red, so we were afraid of putting anything in his nose to take it out. To make sure everything was ok we took him to the ENT department of Saint Christopher’s Hospital for Children, Philadelphia.

After waiting there for a while a white male doctor looked inside his nose but he wasn’t sure, so he called the head of the department. This older white doctor just looked once and told us nothing was there and the red thing was a part of his nose, so we should not bother it. We were relieved and came home. 

Unfortunately, after a few days he started to smell bad. It was getting worse every day. After a while it was very hard to sit in the same car with him because of the strong odor. I got worried and started to search online. Everyone with this type of experience wrote that something in the nose created the smells and it was gone after that was taken out. 

We took him to the same ENT department again. This time a lady doctor came to see him. We told her about the odor and my suspicion. She looked in the nose and said there was something and took out a red cotton ball (picture above). We told her that we were there about a month ago but two other doctors told us there was nothing in his nose even though we thought we saw something in his nose. She didn’t know what to say, so she went back and brought another senior male doctor with her. He said something like – we usually believe the parents in these cases but wasn’t sure what happened in our previous visit.  I don’t remember if he said sorry because I was very upset thinking if they had taken that thing out of his nose a month ago he wouldn’t have suffered for this long. He was a little baby and didn’t learn to speak till then so he suffered quietly. After that day the smell was gone. 

Recently, I heard on the radio that the white doctors do not usually believe or ignore the black/brown patients. Our concerns were dismissed by the department head, a white doctor, after he looked once in my child’s nose. I am not sure if the doctor was racist but I never forgot this incident and every time I remember it I get upset.