A heartbroken mother shares a tragic experience that will scar her for life after her 4-year-old son died when he inhaled a thumbtack the day of his brother’s birthday, before dying in hospital.
The mother, Ayla Rutherford shared her story to advise other home-schooling parents to get rid of all thumbtacks after her toddler son’s tragic death.
As reported by News.com.au, Ayla was getting her eldest son’s birthday cake ready when she decided to take a break and have a shower. Little did she know that her life was going to change forever.
Her sons had been running around, being the “crazy kids” they have always been. When her husband had woken up, she decided to go have a shower after a hectic morning of preparing for the birthday.
All of a sudden, she heard her family screaming frantically downstairs saying that something was wrong with her four-year-old boy, Axel.
“I came downstairs to see my husband doing the Heimlich [applying upward pressure on the upper abdomen to force a foreign object from the trachea] on Axel,” Ayla said on her GoFundMe page.
Despite their best efforts to save Axel, he lost all consciousness, turned blue, and was immediately rushed to Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma.
Doctors found Axel had not been choking but had inhaled a common household drawing pin (thumbtack), which had pierced through his left lung and left him unable to breathe.
After a week on life support and four tests that confirmed that he was brain dead, Axel passed away in his parents’ arms, leaving his family to agonise over how a simple, small piece of stationery could have taken their son away forever.
Ayla and Josh are now warning others to throw out any pins and thumbtacks they have at home to prevent their children from suffering the same tragic fate they had recently faced.
“All I want to do is prevent other people from going through what we had to go through. I want to let people know that [pins are] such a normal thing to have in your house – to hang up posters, picture frames, Christmas lights, calendars. Everybody uses them and all it takes is for one little kid to pick it up, put it in their mouth, inhale it and puncture their lungs,” she said.
“If you have pins around the house, throw them out or lock them up. It’s not worth your child’s life or pain. My husband and I held Axel as he passed away. He was four years old, one month, and four days old. I don’t want anybody to have to go through this,” she added.
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