Big Scare/Our TV Debut

**Update: I called the Hexbug headquarters in Texas today (2/12) to speak with someone in their legal department about my safety concerns with the button batteries in their products.  To my surprise, they had already seen the story on 9News! The head counselor said "Are you the mom that was on TV last week?"  Wow, news travels fast!  He was very polite & shared my concerns about the batteries but was unsure how to go about putting that into a packaging warning.  I told him that I felt it was important enough to warrant a blurb somewhere on their product. (He pointed out that anything on their packaging has to be translated into 6 languages, so it couldn't be too "wordy".)  Anyway, apparently there is a big toy fair in NY today, so all the head honchos are out-of-town. But, he assured me that it would be put onto their radar when they returned from the show.  I hope so!!!!  I'm not looking for lip service.  I will be following up with this and keep you posted!
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We had a scary incident on Monday afternoon that has turned into a public service announcement for other parents who were clueless about the dangers of button batteries, like we were.

Carter was trying to change the battery on one of his Hexbugs (unbeknownst to me) while I was in the bathroom (and no, I did not share that part on TV).  He later told me "I just wanted to see if it would fit in my nose." He freaked out when he put it up his nose & soon realized he was not able to get it out. Thankfully, he is a worrier and came to tell me immediately.  He said it hurt & he couldn't breathe, but I could tell that he was breathing just fine through his mouth.  I tried to clear it by blocking his opposite nostril and having him blow out through the nostril with the battery.  That didn't work and I resisted my urge to go get the tweezers to pull it out because it was lodged so high up I was worried I would just push it in farther, making the situation worse.  So, I called our pediatrician and they told me to take Carter to the ER immediately as they did not have the proper instrument to do it in the office.  My next call was to Sean to get home ASAP so he could stay with Davis. (I really did not want to deal with both boys in the ER, especially with all the respiratory and GI bugs that have been going around!)

On our way to the ER, Carter sneezed a couple of times & I thought "Great, this will clear it out!" No such luck.  So, on we drove.  Once at the ER, we were seen fairly quickly and within 15 minutes we had the Nurse Practitioner telling us that if she was unable to remove the battery with a balloon catheter, we would need to go immediately to the main Children's campus to see an ENT doctor.  That was scary.  I had told Carter what she would be doing & we had a chance to look at the catheter ahead of time (my Child Life Specialist skills came in handy), so he did well staying still as she fed the tiny tube up his nostril, just past the battery, then inflated the balloon and pulled out the tiny battery with the balloon.  Success! It was only after the fact that she told me they had a 3-year-old patient who died less than 24 hours after ingesting a button battery.  I actually think the aftermath of the whole event has been scarier than the actual event!   I was still in shock driving home thinking about all the potential disastrous alternate outcomes.  We are SO fortunate that this did not end differently & wanted to share that with other parents out there in an effort to  prevent this (or worse) from happening again.

On Tuesday night, I submitted a news tip to our local NBC affiliate, and on Wednesday morning I started getting calls from them to do a story about what happened to Carter.  In all honesty, I did not want to be on TV.  It's just not my thing and I get really nervous about being on camera.  I was just hoping they would see the value in our learning experience and do their own story on the danger of these batteries.  However, Dave Delozier is seasoned photojournalist for the TV station and he convinced me that going on camera was the right thing to do.  He is a new grandfather and was genuinely interested in getting our story out there to other parents & grandparents of young children.  I think he did a wonderful job and am so grateful to him for his interest in our story and making it happen. Here is the story on 9News.

Here you can see the battery after it was removed from Carter's nose.  If you look very closely, you can see that the rim of the battery is already black (this was after I cleaned all the gross stuff off of it) from corrosion and burning tissue.  And yes, I cleaned off the balloon catheter/syringe contraption and brought that sucker home!  After all, we paid for it and they can't use it again.  Let's hope we never have to use it!!  Incidentally, Carter continues to do well and we are putting Bacitracin ointment inside his nostril every night before bed.  It seems to be healing well and he only has a tiny bit of bloody discharge from that nostril now. Thank God our story has a happy ending!