A four-year-old girl was rushed to the hospital after swallowing a button battery from a broken electronic tracking device, a device her mother had purchased initially to keep her family safe during a trip to Disneyland.
Lisa Marie realized while on the trip with her four children that the $29 Oreo-sized trackers did not work, so she stowed them in her car’s glove compartment with a plan to bring them to a store for repair.
The trip ended, and the family returned home to Vancouver Island, Canada, leaving the dysfunctional trackers forgotten in the glove box.
Until one day, Lisa heard a gulping sound come from the backseat. Her four-year-old daughter Lily had reached the device and swallowed what she told her parents was a quarter.
But an X-ray at the hospital that day revealed she had actually swallowed a small button battery taken from within one of the tags.
Marie said: ‘As a mom, when we figured out it was a button battery, I was like, okay, her whole insides are burned out. I was on the bathroom floor of the hospital crying.’
Swallowing a button battery is a serious medical emergency. Once inside the body, the moist environment of the esophagus or throat completes an electrical circuit between the battery’s positive and negative terminals.
A chemical reaction occurs when the circuit is completed, generating sodium hydroxide, a powerful, industrial-strength chemical that burns and liquefies the surrounding flesh.
The chemical, which is also used to unclog drains, can burn a hole through the esophagus within a couple of hours. If it reaches the digestive tract, it can become lodged there, where it can start to burn through the intestinal wall, potentially leading to a hole, infection, and severe internal damage.
Four-year-old Lily, pictured in her hospital bed, swallowed the button battery inside a tracking device. She narrowly avoided a deadly chemical burn in her esophagus
The small round trackers Marie purchased are popular devices used to track the location of electronics, but are commonly used now to track everything from luggage to pets and children.
‘Disneyland is scary so I bought them to track my kids,’ Marie said. ‘The things that I thought would keep my kids safe are actually what caused harm.’
A generally cautious parent, Marie has always been careful with batteries around her children.
She said she had repeatedly warned them of the dangers of button batteries over the years, with the latest warning issued just two weeks prior to the incident.
She never believed her children would go into the glove box and take the small metal tags, let alone open them up and swallow their contents.
The button battery that Lily swallowed did not stay in her esophagus, sparing her from a deadly chemical burn.
But the X-ray revealed that it had reached her bowel, still a dangerous position.
Doctors chose not to operate on the little girl to remove the battery, which would have involved a major invasive procedure with significant risks of its own, including infection and anesthesia complications.
The button battery that Lily swallowed is pictured. Her mother had stored the tracking devices in her car’s glove compartment when she realized while on a trip to Disneyland that the devices did not work
The button battery reached Lily’s digestive system. Typically, once inside the esophagus, moisture completes an electrical circuit between the battery’s terminals, triggering a reaction that produces a potent chemical that rapidly burns and dissolves surrounding tissue
Instead, they sent the family home with laxatives to allow Lily to pass the battery naturally.
‘I was giving her laxatives and all kinds of things to try and get this thing out of her,’ Marie said. ‘I had her on trampolines, on a vibration plate, eating prunes, everything.’
The anxiety took a toll on her family. Lily’s siblings asked if their sister was going to die, while Marie exhausted all options to help speed her digestion along.
After four days, Lily passed the battery.
Marie said: ‘I wouldn’t want that to happen to anybody else. It was very scary.
‘If you have any toys that have button batteries in them, then throw them out, get rid of them.’
In 2020, nearly two-year-old Johnathan Huff suddenly fell ill at daycare. He became lethargic and had a bloody nose. When he vomited, there was blood there too.
Doctors believed Johnathan was suffering from a viral illness that caused fever and vomiting. A few days after getting sick, Johnathan had a fatal seizure.
Lily was allowed to leave the hospital to pass the battery naturally. Her mother fed her laxatives to speed the process along, but it took four days
Lily, second from right in front of her father, is pictured with her family. After the terrifying ordeal, her mother disposed of her toys that used the same type of batteries
A routine autopsy revealed that a small button battery was lodged in Johnathan’s intestines.
The official cause of his death was a massive hemorrhage, caused by the battery’s corrosive chemicals burning through his esophageal and aortic walls.
His mother, Jackie, said: ‘It immediately felt like it was something we had done, we were desperately trying to figure out where this battery had come from.
‘It wasn’t a long search. We went to where we kept the remotes and discovered the key finder remote’s back was off.’
Poison control gets around 3,000 calls a year about kids swallowing button batteries.
And researchers have tallied more than 70 deaths from ingesting them, recorded in a poison control database dating back to the 70s, though the actual number is likely far higher, as many cases are never documented in medical research or the media, and the official reporting hotline has been closed for six years.