There are many challenges and dares that kids attempt to perform.
While many are just silly or embarrassing, others are far more dangerous – something Freddie Webster, who is 12 years old, learned the hard way.
While at school on a Tuesday, Freddie was trying to see if he could perform a new schoolyard challenge.
It involved trying to test the strength of magnets by placing one magnet inside his mouth while holding the other against the outside of his cheek.
He used magnetic ball bearings to perform this trick, but as he tried it out, he made a mistake and accidentally wound up swallowing them.
But Freddie didn’t stop there. He continued to attempt the challenge, but failed again.
By the end of the school day he had managed to swallow a whopping four magnets.
The next day, he started to experience stomach pain and told his mother, Sarah, about two of the magnets.
She wasn’t entirely sure what to do, but she thought they would simply pass through his body.
The pain continued throughout Wednesday, and it kept going.
On the morning of Friday, Freddie approached his mother and told her that the pain was so severe it had completely prevented him from sleeping the previous night.
So, Sarah rang up a doctor and told them what happened. This was when Freddie admitted to swallowing four of them, not just two.
Magnets can cause serious harm to the body, so it’s no surprise that doctors told Sarah and Freddie to get to a hospital as soon as possible.
An X-ray was then performed, and it showed a shocking situation.
All four of the swallowed magnets had wound up attracted to each other, causing them to stick together.
Surgery was needed in order to repair all the damage wreaked by the clump of magnets.
It took almost 5 hours for the surgery to finish, and when it was done, Freddie was in a relatively stable condition but not doing very well.
The next day would prove to be vital in ensuring his survival.
Doctors were frankly confused as to why Freddie did not say he was in more pain that he should have been with such severe injuries.
Sarah went in to see him and saw her son hooked up to all sorts of drips and tubes.
But the first thing Freddie did was pull off his oxygen mask so he could ask her if he would still be able to go on a pre-planned school skiing trip coming up in March!
Unfortunately, Freddie’s actions have lifelong consequences.
10 centimeters of his bowel was taken out during his surgery, and even after an eight-day hospital stay, he will need to regularly visit doctors to ensure his bowel health is not deteriorating.
Sadly, injuries due to schoolyard dares are not uncommon.
In fact, in the past couple of months, Freddie marks the fourth boy who his hospital had seen for this exact same reason.
That’s why Sarah wants to warn families, parents, and even children who might be caught up in these challenges of the dangers of swallowing magnets and any other foreign items.