My baby’s toe was nearly amputated — doctors said a strand of hair was the problem
It turned into a keratin-filled garrote.
A UK mom claims her toddler nearly had to have his toe amputated after a strand of her hair got wrapped around it, cutting off the blood flow.
“I had never had to deal with anything like this before,” Laura Powles, 31, told Kennedy News of the freak accident.
The Wales resident said her 10-week-old toddler Skylah-Rae had been acting really “grizzly” [fussy] for a couple of days, but chalked it up to normal tiredness and forgot about it.
Then, one day, while changing her diaper, the Brit noticed that one of the tot’s toes was unusually red like a boiled shrimp, as seen in alarming photos.
“It was really swollen and red and I was panicking,” exclaimed Powles, who subsequently rushed the tyke to the Prince Of Wales Hospital in Bridgend.
There, doctors revealed that the tot suffered from hair tourniquet syndrome, an affliction that occurs when an errant strand of hair wraps around an infant’s small appendages, generally the toes, fingers, or the penis.
“I had never heard of this before,” described the alarmed mother.
While it may seem innocuous, this ailment can disrupt the circulation of said digits, hence the ailment’s name. This beta-carotene garrote can result in tissue death, which can, in some instances, require the affected appendage to be amputated.
Hoping to avoid this outcome, doctors applied hair removal cream into the crack where the digit was swollen for 20 minutes, repeating this cycle four times.
When that failed, they reapplied the cream, keeping it for 30 minutes this time, which caused the baby’s skin to break and blister.
“The whole experience was absolutely horrendous,” Powles recalled. “When the hair removal cream was on and it was burning her skin, she was absolutely screaming but they said this was the only way to get the tourniquet off.”
Unfortunately, this treatment failed to do the trick, after which doctors informed the horrified parents that little Skylah-Rae might require surgery.
Thankfully, this wasn’t necessary. Medics finally managed to remove the hair using medical tweezers, saving the tot from having to lose a tootsie by a hair.
Meanwhile, the cream-induced blisters scabbed over and persisted for a week before clearing up.
Powles’ psychological scars, on the other hand, took a lot longer to heal. “You put so much blame on yourself and just ask yourself why I didn’t check her toes,” the rueful guardian lamented.
However, doctors told her that the condition is “quite common” but that “parents aren’t as aware about checking it,” she said.
In light of the hairy situation, Powles is warning other parents to check their children’s toes on a “daily basis,” including “every time you change them.”
“I just want to get this message out there,” she said. “If it can help just one child, that is what I want to do.”
While it predominantly affects tots, hair tourniquet syndrome has been known to plague adults on occasion.
In 2022, an Australian man nearly lost part of his penis after a stray public hair ensnared the tip and cut off its circulation like a miniature choker.
