Mum issues Christmas present warning after daughter needed 20 operations

A mother is urging parents to be vigilant when children unwrap new toys this Christmas after her daughter suffered a horrific injury requiring more than 20 operations.

Priscilla Henenberg’s daughter Zelcia was just one year old when she became suddenly ill – crying, unable to eat and struggling to breathe.

An x-ray at hospital showed what doctors initially believed to be a 10p coin inside her body. But an operation revealed it was in fact a button battery that had caused serious internal damage.

Priscilla said: “We still don’t know how she got the battery. We didn’t know it was that until she went to theatre. 

“The only thing we wanted to know was if she was going to survive, and that was the only thing they were not able to tell me.”

Zelcia received urgent treatment at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) in September 2016. Now aged nine, she has undergone more than 20 operations including a tracheostomy.

The brave youngster returns to the hospital every few months for regular check-ins. Priscilla, of north London, said: “Now we live as much of a normal life as we can, but there’s a lot of uncertainty. 

“We just take it one day at a time. There are so many appointments and so many different teams at the hospital. 

“She’s at school now and enjoys dancing and art and is doing well but we know it could have been worse.” 

Button batteries and magnets found in new toys can cause life-changing injuries. 

Doctors at GOSH have treated nine children in the last year who all required major multiple surgeries – and they expect cases to rise during the festive period.

Consultant paediatric surgeon Paolo De Coppi said: “The danger of these tiny button batteries and magnets is huge – they really can cause horror injuries.

“If swallowed, they could cause irreversible damage to a child’s throat and stomach in a matter of minutes and mean a lifetime of operations and procedures. In the worst cases they can prove fatal.

“Batteries can be caught in the food pipe and in matters of hours destroy both the food pipe and windpipe while magnets can migrate lower in the intestine and cause multiple holes requiring complex surgeries. Urgent treatment is crucial.”

Dr De Coppi added: “I cannot stress this enough – please, please keep button batteries and magnets away from children. 

“In serious cases, the surgeries we perform to reverse the damage use a significant amount of blood bags – up to 13 bags – this is very rare and demonstrates how consequential these incidents are.”