4-year-old girl, Camila Romero, remains in a medically induced coma at Loma Linda Children’s Hospital in California after swallowing a button battery that burned a hole through her esophagus, her parents said.
Cassandra Tafolla and Hugo Romero spoke in a joint interview with KTLA on Thursday, March 19, about the incident that has changed their family’s life.
The parents said they had never heard of button batteries and do not know how their daughter got one.
“Something so small caused something so big. It burned a hole in her esophagus. Where it burned a hole is really close to where our lungs part. From the hole to her lungs, it’s only about an eighth of an inch from each other.” Cassandra, tearfully said in the interview, on Thursday, March 19.
When the parents first brought Camila to the hospital, doctors thought the 4-year-old’s symptoms were consistent with a virus because she arrived with a fever that lasted a week.
The situation changed when Tafolla asked if the illness could be pneumonia and requested an X-ray, revealing the small button battery in her throat.
Doctors have removed the button battery, but significant damage has already been done leaving Camila has been in the medically induced coma for the past two weeks.
The 4-year-old will still need to undergo another surgery to close the hole in her chest from the initial operation, the parents said.
According to the hospital, when swallowed, the electric current in lithium “button” batteries can be activated by saliva, causing “a chemical reaction that can severely burn the esophagus in as little as two hours.”
“I just hope it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Romero told the local news station. “But I’ve just been trying to stay strong.”
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