APPLETON, Wis. — As more dangerous and deadly incidents involving kids ingesting water beads happen, Children's Wisconsin says they are changing the conversation they have with parents and caregivers in the hospital. That change came, in part, because of an Appleton child’s case.
Deacon Nickols is a typical two-year-old, busy and into everything. He also has surgical scars across his belly from when doctors at Children's Wisconsin saved his life.
More than a year ago, when Deacon was 8 months old, his mom says his older siblings were playing with water beads and spilled them on the floor. She thought they were all cleaned up, but says a couple of days later, Deacon wouldn’t eat and kept throwing up.
"When we got to the emergency room they said he probably just has a stomach bug. I said, ‘What if there's a possibility that he has a bowel obstruction, we had a spill of these at our house,’” said Nickols. “They said, ‘We could give him an X-ray and see, but why don't you just go home and if he continues you could just come back if this anti-nausea medicine doesn't work.'”
Deacon's mom pushed for the X-ray and that's when doctors could see something was in Deacon's intestines. That's when they transferred him to Children's Wisconsin in Wauwatosa. Doctors, at the time, said injuries associated with water beads were hard to diagnose because there wasn't much publicized information about them.
“It is kind of a newer thing that we are recognizing. The material that water beads are made of is something that isn't automatically going to show up on the typical forms that we use to look for problems in the belly which is most commonly X-ray,” said Dr. Rachel Ashworth, pediatric critical care at Children’s Wisconsin.
It is why Ashworth said doctors had a hard time spotting all the water beads in Deacon. They removed four. By that point, the beads had grown from the size of a sprinkle to the size of a grape inside of him. Plus, doctors had to go back and do a second surgery when another bead was found.
"He had developed a perforated bowel and he had a bad infection and an abscess that needed to be cleared out and a portion of his intestines became so corroded they ended up removing 6 inches of his intestines,” said Nickols.
Since Deacon's case, Ashworth says the questions asked when kids come into the hospital for unexplained throwing up or a potential obstruction have changed.
“I will ask a family, 'Do you have small magnets, button batteries that are accessible to kids, do you have water beads?'” said Ashworth.
For Nickols, she now works to warn others.
“I would say don't have water beads in your house,” said Nickols. “If the packaging said, if ingested could cause bowel obstruction or death. I would be like, why would anybody buy this? I wouldn't have bought them.”
If you witnessed or suspect a child has eaten a water bead, Ashworth says if the child has severe stomach pain or the inability to keep any food or water down. go immediately to the emergency room. If you there are no symptoms, but you still suspect a child has ingested a water bead, call your pediatrician or poison control on what to do next.
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