Surgeons are urging people to throw out wire-bristled barbecue brushes because none of them could figure out a surefire way of removing them once they get stuck in people’s throats.
“It’s a needle in a haystack, but the haystack is your tongue,” said Dr. Ian Dempsey, an otolaryngologist in Dartmouth, N.S. “It’s not an easy structure to go fishing around in, especially when it gets embedded in deeply,” he said.
One woman, named Lisa Wadden ate a burger while at a barbecue with her husband and noticed something sharp in her throat shortly after. “Every swallow, it just was this crazy pain, burning,” she said. “It was like being poked again with it every single time that I swallowed.”
X-rays showed that Wadden had swallowed a thin wire about 1.5cm long, and it was stuck in her throat. Over the next four months, she had multiple X-rays, CT scans, scopes and two unsuccessful surgeries in an attempt to remove it. Dr. Dempsey, Wadden’s otolaryngologist, told her it was best to wait for scar tissue to build up around the wire and lessen the pain.
Wadden says she wasn’t using an old or inexpensive brush, and sadly she still has the wire embedded in her throat. It doesn’t cause her daily pain, but she does still know it’s there. “It happened in the blink of an eye. There was nothing I could have done, nothing I could have seen,” says Wadden. “If anyone’s having a barbecue that has a metal-cleaning brush, I won’t even go close to that.”
Another man, Kevin Gallant, describes that he swallowed a bristle, but didn’t even notice right away. He struggled with unexplained stomach issues for about a year and a half before having surgery. “I was very ill, probably as close to death as you want to be,” he said from his home in Summerside, P.E.I.
The lesson here folks is to be very careful when eating anything off the barbeque. If you have any pain, please consult your doctor immediately.
[Featured Image Credit: Lisa Wadden via cbc.ca]
Woman Winds Up In The Hospital After Getting Wire From BBQ Bristle Brush Stuck In Her Throat is an article from: LifeDaily