Just a spoonful of honey helps the battery go down: Quick thinking saves Barberton toddler
Quick thinking and a search on the internet helped save little Maggie Jacobsen’s life last month.
The 3-year-old Barberton girl had accidentally swallowed a button battery from a toy. The little battery can cause severe damage to the body and in some cases, death.
But in Maggie’s case, the battery did not cause damage. That’s thanks to something that is commonly found in kitchen pantries: honey.
Maggie’s thankful mom shared her story on Facebook and her post went viral. It has now been shared nearly 250,000 times.
A birthday dinner
Aug. 25 was mom Katie Jacobsen’s 41st birthday. Her husband, Andy, ordered Cracker Barrel takeout so the mom of eight, ages 1 to 18, could have a break.
After dinner, Andy and Katie were sitting in the living room with some of the kids, who had taken out some toys.
“Maggie comes over to me and she pointed to her mouth and she says, ‘I just swallowed that,’ “ Katie recalled recently.
As Katie started looking around, her son held up one of Maggie’s singing Anna and Elsa dolls from “Frozen“ and said, "I just took one of those out.”
Katie looked at the doll’s leg to see a battery compartment open and a battery missing. The family later theorized the family dog had chewed open the compartment, which has screws to keep it closed.
“My first thought is, ‘Can we get it back?’ ” Katie said.
Maggie was not choking or showing signs of distress. But Katie knew she needed to get Maggie to the hospital. She began getting Maggie’s diaper bag and things together.
In the background, Katie could hear her 16-year-old daughter, Eva, who is a lifeguard, talking to her dad and saying she was looking up what to do on the internet.
Eva remembered from her lifeguard class that you should not make someone throw up because that could cause the object to get stuck in the airway. She found a poison control website that suggested giving someone who had ingested a button battery some honey.
Eva yelled to her mom that they needed to find some honey and ran to the kitchen cabinet, where they had a little bottle of honey, but it was mostly empty.
“As I was passing by the counter, I was like, ‘Oh, we have honey packets literally right here,’ ” Eva said.
The Cracker Barrel dinner had rolls and packets of honey. Family members are not big honey eaters. Maggie had never had honey before.
The packets “were just sitting on the table still because we hadn’t cleaned up,” said Katie.
Katie didn’t understand why honey would make a difference, but figured it was worth a try. Eva convinced Maggie to eat the honey, saying it tasted like candy.
Katie sat in the back of the van next to Maggie’s car seat, giving her more honey occasionally while Andy drove to Akron Children’s Hospital’s emergency room.
Katie, who felt that it was divine intervention that there happened to be honey packets at the house, was praying during the drive: “Lord, please let this child not know what she’s talking about and that she did not swallow a battery.”
When they got to the ER, the waiting room was full. They were taken back quickly once they said Maggie had swallowed a battery.
Katie told the first nurse what happened and when the nurse asked if Maggie had anything else to eat or drink, Katie said she gave her honey.
“She kind of looked at us like, ‘OK, well, don’t give her anything else.’ ”
The next nurse didn’t seem as surprised about the honey and said they would be bringing in some medication that was similar for Maggie to take.
An X-ray showed the little battery in Maggie’s stomach. That was good news, a doctor said, because that was much safer than the battery being stuck in her esophagus.
Maggie was admitted. If the battery was still in her stomach in the morning, she would likely need surgery to remove it.
In the morning, the battery had moved to Maggie’s intestines, so doctors told her parents to order her some breakfast and they could go home and wait for the battery to pass in her bowel movements.
Dangers of swallowing batteries
In a study published last month in the American Academy of Pediatrics' journal, the number of emergency room visits for battery-related incidents among children more than doubled 2010 to 2019 compared to 1999 to 2009. The number of incidents went down from 2017 to 2019, but “prevention efforts have not significantly reduced injury rates; therefore, regulatory efforts are needed,” the study said. “Ultimately, hazard reduction or elimination through safer button battery design is critical and should be adopted by the battery industry.”
Button batteries can cause serious injury to children’s internal organs and, in rare cases, death, especially if not treated quickly, said Dr. Joseph Iocono, a pediatric general surgeon at Akron Children’s Hospital.
The small batteries are just one of many things that kids swallow and get stuck, said Iocono.
Foreign objects can get stuck in various parts of the esophagus, which is narrow, he said. If an object can get past the narrow esophagus and into the stomach, the chances are better that the object can pass all the way through the body.
But the caustic makeup of a battery, if it is lodged in the esophagus, can burn a hole in the esophagus, he said. That can cause a host of issues to other organs, including infections that can lead to pneumonia or other problems. In rare cases, the ingestion can cause death if the battery erodes into an area and gets near the heart, Iocono said.
“These are the worst-case scenarios,” said Iocono, who has had a patient die from ingesting a battery. “The vast majority of these things that are ingested either don’t get stuck in the esophagus and they go all the way through or they recognize it and come in and we pluck them out within six to 12 hours (by a scope in an operating room), and they usually do just fine.”
Iocono did not take care of Maggie since she did not require surgery but is aware of her case. Her risk was a little lower, Iocono said, since she swallowed one of the small button batteries. But the larger batteries, such as those used in watches or in car keyless entry key fobs that are generally the size of a quarter, pose greater risks of getting stuck and have more surface area for the acidic battery to start to cause damage once mixed with saliva.
Why honey?
A study came out in 2018 from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which found that eating honey after ingesting a battery has the potential to reduce the injury to a child. The team tried a variety of common liquids found in the home, including sports drinks and sodas.
“Honey is actually thick enough and it basically causes a buffer between the metal and the esophageal wall,” said Iocono.
The research team warned against giving honey to children under 1, due to a small risk of botulism.
Iocono said it is still important for parents to get the child to the closest hospital soon after a battery has been swallowed for the best outcome.
A national poison control guideline now recommends two teaspoons of honey every 10 minutes on the way to the hospital after swallowing a battery. Iocono said a child older than 1 year old could take one teaspoon while an older child, like a 3- to 4-year-old, may need two teaspoons every 10 minutes.
Viral Facebook post
When the Jacobsens got back home, Katie was swinging Maggie on a backyard swing and thinking about their experience. She decided to type out a Facebook post to share about the battery and how honey helped.
“I’ve got a lot of friends that have young kids, and we felt like it was an encouragement that there was this divine intervention that even though she was in a tough situation, the Lord was with us,” said Katie.
Katie didn’t think much of her Facebook post. She originally was going to set it as private post for only her Facebook friends, but decided to make it a public post as a quick way to update some friends who could still see it, even if they weren’t on Facebook.
Her post started getting shared exponentially. About 90% of the comments were positive, but some were not. Katie even heard from two moms whose children died after swallowing a battery. She shared their stories on an update to the post.
Eventually, Katie turned off the comments after it had more than 2,500 comments, 52,000 likes and 247,000 shares. The post is still shareable because Katie wants people to be educated.
She’s also been interviewed by TV stations and for The Today Show’s Today.com website and was contacted by several international news outlets.
“Looking back, I had no idea so many people were going to see that. I would have done better, like a grammar and spell check,” she said.
Katie is aware of at least two people who had children swallow button batteries after seeing the post and knew what to do.
“Isn’t that amazing? Those are just the two I know of, and there could be more. That kind of blows me away and made me say, ‘OK, it was worth it.’ ”
Older sister Eva, who looked up the honey tip, said she doesn’t feel like a hero.
"It’s a fun story to tell my class. This week, we had an icebreaker activity, so I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my fun story,’ ” Eva said. But as a lifeguard, “my literal job is to save lives, so I guess the best words to say are, ‘It’s all in a day’s work.’ ”
Beacon Journal staff reporter Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her @blinfisherABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/BettyLinFisherABJ. To see her most recent stories and columns, go to www.tinyurl.com/bettylinfisher.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Mom's viral Facebook post: Honey helps after swallowing button battery
