Mom and dad were stunned after ‘popcorn sent their 2-year-old baby to the operating table’!
We all love popcorn, right? Well yes, nothing can beat popcorn when you’re watching your favourite movie. Unfortunately, for this little boy a movie night became the beginning of a nightmare. Both parents, Nicole and Jake, picked out a movie and gotten their family settled with a large tub of popcorn as many would do. At some point during their viewing of the movie, their youngest child, Nash, started to cough. Shortly after, the little boy seemed to get his breathing under control and the family continued watching the movie. The mother noticed her son occasionally would cough, but she attributed it to a minor virus that had run through the household recently.
They went about their night with everyone going to bed and things went as usual the next day until the mother noticed a Nash was much fussier than usual and had a fever. Aa most parents would do, she gave him motrin and sent him to bed. She chose to stay with him and at some point during the night noticed he was having issues breathing and rang the doctor. The pediatrician recommended taking him to the hospital right away which they did where the boy underwent a series of test.
He first had a chest x ray then had to be sedated to have a bronchoscopy done. The end result was that there were multiple pieces, six to be exact, of popcorn ingrained in his lungs and his body was reacting to the foreign material as if it were an infection. The inflammation around this led to pneumonia. While Nash was undergoing his procedure, the mother called her husband to come home as he was on a business trip. After the first go around the doctor stated he would like to do one more procedure to ensure they hadn’t missed anything as Nash’s lungs were extremely inflamed. After some tests, Nash was admitted to the hospital and ordered into surgery.
Nicole wrote all this up and shared it in a facebook post that has since reached over 180,000 people and has ben shared all over the globe. Pediatricians do not recommend popcorn for children under 5 as they can’t cough up the little pieces, as they do not have the strength. The reaction to her post was mostly thankful and people sharing concerns but there were a fews stories shared in the comments of families that had lost children in this same manner and had never considered something so common could be so dangerous to their children. Both parents said that they had no idea that children under the age of five aren’t strong enough to cough up bits of food like popcorn. Dear readers, we are republishing this story to raise awareness about the potential danger.