A nine-year-old girl almost died due to a little-known danger hidden in her bacon and egg roll, and her mother wants parents to be aware of it so it doesn’t happen again.
Kristen Saunders wrote on Facebook that her daughter swallowed a piece of wire from a brush used to clean barbecues, which was in the roll she bought at a local sausage sizzle.
‘The wire pierced her oesophagus then pushed into the carotid artery of the neck,’ the mum from Newcastle, NSW wrote about her girl, whose name she has withheld.
The injury was so severe, the child had to be flown by helicopter from John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle to Westmead Hospital in Sydney.
Her daughter had ‘major vascular and cardio thoracic surgery then aspiration of brain abscesses then another six weeks on IV antibiotics’.
A nine-year-old girl (pictured) almost died due to a little-known danger hidden in her bacon and egg roll, and her mother wants people to be aware of it so it doesn’t happen again
Kristen Saunders wrote on Facebook that her daughter swallowed a piece of wire (pictured in an X-ray) from a brush used to clean barbecues, which was in the roll bought at a local venue
Ms Saunders told the ABC Newcastle radio station how the near tragedy unfolded. She said her little one was ‘munching away, then she started to feel like she was choking’.
‘I think like most parents, we’re like, “You’ll be fine, have some water, it’ll settle down”,’ she said.
She later took the child to their doctor, but the problem was not found and the Year 4 student – still with a sore throat and having difficulty eating solid foods – took part in her school athletics carnival.
But soon after that, her condition got worse.
‘There was this one particular day I was at home with her and all of a sudden she was a bit confused answering questions,’ Ms Saunders said.
The wire (pictured) pierced her oesophagus then pushed into the carotid artery of the neck
Ms Saunders said her little one was ‘munching away, then she started to feel like she was choking’
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‘I was like, “Hang on, there’s something really problematic here” and called the GP – she (said) go straight to the hospital.’
By the time they got to John Hunter Hospital she was stumbling, disorientated and could not even recognise her own family.
‘They identified that there were some abscesses in the brain,’ Ms Saunders said.
‘They ended up at the last minute doing a CT and identified there was this tiny bit of wire, sort of near her neck.’
She realised that things were ‘pretty serious’.
Kristen Saunders said her daughter (pictured) has made a ‘phenomenal recovery’ from the terrifying ordeal
The little girl was flown by air ambulance to another hospital for surgery
‘There was a major infection in one of her arteries,’ she said. ‘They had to replace it and there was a risk of all these different things, so that was pretty awful.’
But thankfully, the surgery at Westmead went well.
‘She actually had a phenomenal recovery, considering what it could have looked like and how it could have ended up, and she’s doing really well now,’ the mum said.
‘She’s off all her antibiotics, she’s back to school, she’ll be back to sport soon.
‘It could have been a lot worse.’
Having gone through a terrifying experience, Ms Saunders has some advice for other parents, urging them to ‘protect your family and friends’ and throw out the wire brush cleaners.
