Two-year-old Kacie Barradell was left fighting for her life after swallowing a household lithium ‘button’ battery.
The toddler’s mother, 27-year-old Cheryl Bell, was told that there a 40% chance her daughter would not live and, if she did, it’s 50/50 whether she would be paralysed from the waist down.
Speaking to the Derby Telegraph, Bell says “Kacie is lucky she survived.”
“I’m going through hell and back. Kacie might not walk properly again for the rest of her life.”
Bell rushed Kacie to hospital in February with diarrhoea and vomiting but it took doctors days before they did an X-ray and realised the two-year-old had swallowed a small battery.
The batteries, which can be found in car keys or even in children’s toys, are incredibly poisonous when ingested as, when mixed with saliva, they cause a chemical reaction which “acts like acid eating through flesh,” and almost immediately begins burning through internal organs.
The one Kacie swallowed was inside of her for a terrifying nine days.
A week after the surgery to remove the object, Kacie began vomiting blood and was sent back into another six hour surgery to try to repair the damage it had done to her body.
After eight weeks, Kacie still can’t eat and doctors still don’t know whether she will ever be able to walk again. Her heartbroken mother is hoping her daughter’s story will educate other parents on the severe dangers of household batteries.
