Summer is supposed to be the fun, let-your-hair-down, cut-loose season. And, for the most part, it is. You ride roller coasters, eat ice cream, sun bathe, and chill on the beach. But just because you put your long pants and sweaters away doesn't mean you can completely let your guard down, unfortunately.
As one mom is reminding us, it doesn't take much to turn a fun summer into a near-tragedy.
When he woke up one night with abdominal pains, his parents thought it might just be constipation, his mother, Tara, explained in a Facebook post.
Suspecting appendicitis, they took him to the hospital, where an ultrasound showed fluid in his abdomen, so doctors prepared to operate.
But, two hours later, the doctors told Brady's mother that his appendix was fine after all.
Brady will be okay, but his recovery will be far from quick, and had the surgeons not found that little wire, he could have been in real trouble.
"Never in a million years did we think it was a barbecue bristle," Tara told Global News.
"The [wired brush] was just there," she said. "My husband thought he was being extremely careful every single time he used it."
"A lot of people come in with abdominal pain and throat pain, and they themselves don't really remember ingesting a wire brush," said Dr. Darrell Chiasson, an emergency room doctor in Halifax. "They're often missed in the initial diagnosis."
Getting a wire lodged in your throat would be bad enough, but when swallowed, the wires become a serious problem. "Once in your intestine, it can perforate through the wall of your intestine, and that is quite concerning," said Dr. Oswaldo Ramirez.
He could recall a patient ending up in the ICU after a grill brush wire punctured his small intestine.
Lots of things can cause abdominal pain, from allergies to gas to food poisoning — and in an emergency room, doctors might not suspect a wire if they don't know that the food had been prepared on a grill.
"The difficult thing is that if you don't have a savvy physician it's very easy to miss making the appropriate diagnosis," Dr. Ramirez said. He and many others recommend simply throwing away wire grill brushes and going with an alternative.
"I stopped at the Superstore for a few things to bring to the hospital and when I walked passed their isle stocked with wire bbq brushes, it took everything in me not to tear the display down," she wrote. "I implore you, if you have a wire brush, please throw it out and get a wooden or nylon one from Costco. Things could have been so much worse for my child."
h/t Global News
