A three-year-old boy had complained of agonizing stomach pain for months, while his doctor only prescribed him painkillers to mask the pain. Eventually, the toddler’s parents knew something had to be wrong and took their son to a local hospital for treatment. While he was there, an x-ray was taken that not only explained the boy’s agony, but the scan left doctors in shock after seeing what the it revealed.
After the three-year-old boy had suffered severe stomach pain for months and his family doctor offered no real solutions, his parents decided to take him to Metro Hospital in Faridabad, India. He was eventually admitted after doctors requested an x-ray performed on the boy’s stomach. Doctors were more than shocked to learn that the boy had suffered from agonizing pain due to a clump of metal objects that were stuck inside his stomach.
Head of Laparoscopic Surgery Dr. Brahm Datt Pathak immediately rushed the young boy into surgery, where the shocking discoveries continued. Inside the boy, the doctor found 29 magnets, a battery, and a coin in his gut, after he had swallowed objects lying around his house, according to Daily Mail.
The ball of metal stuck in the boy’s stomach
There were 29 magnets in total, very unusual,” Pathak admitted. “It seems he’d been swallowing these objects for over a year. I would even say it had become a habit for him.”
Unfortunately for the boy, the ingested magnets had stuck together and created a huge magnetic ball inside of his stomach, causing him severe pain and even damaging his insides. “It was an extremely complicated case. The baby’s gut was completely damaged due to the amount of magnets in his stomach,” explained Pathak.
The surgery to remove the objects lasted a grueling three hours. Evidently, the family ran a jewelry box making business from their home, which explains how the boy obtained so many of the unusual objects and ingested them.
Some of the objects removed from his stomach.
If the pieces had been small enough they would have passed through him naturally in his excretion process, but these objects were just too large and his case needed special attention,” Pathak added. “I’m sure the boy had been in pain for a long time, it’s sad his condition had not been picked up sooner.”
If you have young children, it’s imperative that you take the proper precautions to ensure their safety. They like to get into anything and everything – including junk that is left on the floor. So, the moral to this story is to childproof your home — it’s better to be safe than sorry.
