Hidden danger in breakfast sandwich nearly claims girl’s life: ‘Pierced her esophagus’
She had a terrifying brush with death.
A 9-year-old Australian girl was left fighting for her life due to a hidden danger lurking in her breakfast sandwich — which caused a severe infection and neurological damage.
“They identified that there were some abscesses in the brain,” her mother, Kristen Saunders, told ABC Newcastle.
The freak accident occurred in July after the girl bought a bacon-and-egg roll at a vendor in her hometown of Newcastle, New South Wales.
She had reportedly been chowing down on the nosh when all of a sudden, “she started to feel like she was choking,” recalled Saunders.
The mom initially didn’t think much of it, perhaps presuming that her daughter had eaten too much too fast.
“I think, like most parents, we’re like, ‘You’ll be fine, have some water, it’ll settle down,’ ” recalled the Aussie, who assumed the matter would resolve on its own.
Her diagnosis initially appeared to be correct as, aside from a sore throat and difficulty swallowing food, the girl’s condition seemed to improve shortly thereafter. She was even able to compete in the school athletics carnival.
That’s when the girl’s health took a turn for the 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,” Saunders said.
Alarmed, the distraught parent called her doctor, who told her to rush her daughter to the emergency room straight away.
However, by the time she arrived, her child’s condition deteriorated to the point that she was stumbling, disoriented and unable to recognize her family, with medics later revealing that she had abscesses in her brain, Yahoo News Australia reported.
Doctors conducted a last-minute CT scan, which revealed the sinister cause of the child’s symptoms: a tiny, hairlike wire in her neck.
The insidious item was actually a bristle from a BBQ brush that had been lurking in her breakfast sandwich. It had reportedly pierced her esophagus and threaded its way into the carotid artery — a major vessel that supplies blood to the brain — where it caused a “major infection,” per her mom.
Remedying this would require doctors to replace the artery, drain the abscesses on her brain, and other procedures that would risk her daughter’s health.
Thankfully, the operation was successful, after which the patient remained in the hospital for a month, so she could recover.
Despite the horrific saga, Saunders claims things “could have been a lot worse.”
“She’s off all her antibiotics, she’s back to school, she’ll be back to sport soon,” said the grateful guardian, who is now sharing her daughter’s saga to warn other parents of this insidious threat.
“It’s something that doesn’t happen that often, but it happens enough, and I’d hate for someone else to go through something like this,” Saunders said. “Think of how many barbecues are running at every Saturday sport and Sunday sport.”
Indeed, according to a 2016 US study published in the Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery journal, there were approximately 1,700 emergency room visits related to grill brushes from 2002 to 2014, ABC.net.au reported.
Experts claim that the problem occurs when brushes are left hanging off the grill, which causes them to deteriorate over time.
“These sharp bristles can break off and get left behind on the grill plate and potentially stick to your food when cooking, posing an ingestion hazard,” said a spokesperson for Choice, a consumer advocacy group.
In May, Florida pediatrician Meghan Martin described the alarming case of a 4-year-old boy who got one of these wires stuck in his tonsils.
