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A four-year-old girl was hurried to the hospital after ingesting a button battery from a faulty electronic tracking device, which her mother had originally acquired to ensure her family’s safety during a Disneyland trip.
While traveling with her four children, Lisa Marie discovered that the $29 Oreo-sized trackers were non-functional, so she placed them in the glove compartment of her car, planning to return them for repair.
The trip ended, and the family returned home to Vancouver Island, Canada, leaving the dysfunctional trackers forgotten in the glove box.
One day, Lisa heard a gulping sound from the backseat, realizing her daughter Lily had accessed the device and ingested 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 recounted, ‘As a mom, upon realizing it was a button battery, I panicked, thinking her insides were burned out and found myself crying on the hospital bathroom floor.’
Ingesting a button battery is a grave medical emergency. Inside the body, the moist environments of the esophagus or throat facilitate an electrical circuit between the battery’s terminals.
This completed circuit induces a chemical reaction that generates sodium hydroxide, an industrial-strength chemical that burns and dissolves surrounding tissue.
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.
