Gregory Robinson
A mum is calling for magnetic beads to be banned after her daughter needed hospital treatment after accidentally swallowing two.
Tabitha Woody, from Rustburg, Virginia, said her daughter Falyn Woody was enjoying her lunch break at school when she placed two round magnetic balls at the top and bottom of her tongue to create the illusion of a piercing.
When the friends began laughing, the 11-year-old inadvertently swallowed both magnets.
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Once she returned home, Falyn complained that her stomach 'hurt'. Tabitha, 50, who works in healthcare, said that when she heard what had happened she contacted Falyn's pediatrician, who advised them to go directly to the emergency room.
Falyn went through a 'horrific' and 'traumatic' ordeal at the hospital as doctors raced to get the magnets out of Falyn's body.
"She has learned a very valuable lesson the hard way. It was very traumatic for her," Tabitha explained.
"That day we went to the hospital, the pediatric doctor told us that she was the third case for these beads within the month.
"I think they definitely need to be banned.
"There was another girl that had done the same thing as Falyn did and pretended they were a piercing, and she was 15 and you definitely would think she would know better."
In the two days Falyn spent in hospital while the doctors tried to remove the magnets, the student had to have a nasogastric tube fitted, intravenous therapy and two enemas.
Tabitha and Falyn's father were by their daughter's side '24/7' as she received emergency treatment.
Tabitha said: "They saw the beads and I think at that time they were still in her intestines but they couldn't tell whether it was stuck between tissues, but they could see them both.
"They did a couple of things with her to try and get them to come down like give her drink to see if they'd wash them down.
"She probably had a good 15 x-rays and in every one you'd see they would move and then they finally got at the bottom of her large intestine and wouldn't move anymore. They were stuck."
"She had an NG tube because they didn't want to feed her so they were feeding her through that to try and push it down. It was just crazy," she added.
The mum-of-six said they were eventually removed via an emergency colonoscopy and were fortunately stuck together – if they hadn't have been, they could have become lodged in tissue, which could have proved fatal.
Five months after the 'rollercoaster' experience, the mum-of-six is now calling for small magnets to be banned. They are often used in toys and she is urging all parents to throw them in the bin and not allow their children near them to avoid future hospitalisations.
"Kids at that age, I don't think they can comprehend how dangerous they are until they have something like what Falyn had to go through," she said.
"As soon as we got home she gave me every one of those magnets and every time she'd find one on the floor in her room of something, she'd go 'here mamma, I've found another one'.
"I'd tell parents to not put it past your children, even if you tell them not to do something, for them to do it because I think the number one thing about kids is their kids and curiosity and trying to be cool.
"No matter how you as a parents stress 'hey, don't do this, you could get hurt'. They're still going to do it if they want to, point blank."