18-Month-Old Nearly Dies After ‘Stomach Bug’ Misdiagnosis; Doctors Later Find He Swallowed a Button Battery

A Texas mother is warning other parents after her 18-month-old son nearly died when doctors failed to detect a life-threatening injury caused by a swallowed button battery, initially mistaking it for a stomach virus.

Madeline Dunn, 26, shared her terrifying experience with the Daily Mail, recounting how her toddler, Kai, one of her twin sons, woke up screaming in pain late one night. “Me and his dad were passing him back and forth between each other, and we made the decision to bring him to the hospital because he was also drooling really badly,” Dunn said, adding that Kai cried through the entire ride to the emergency room.

When they arrived at the hospital, doctors assured Dunn that her son had a common stomach virus. But her mother’s intuition told her something was seriously wrong. Dunn, who has long feared that one of her twins might accidentally swallow something dangerous, insisted on an X-ray.

“They said they could do one to make me feel better,” she recalled. That scan turned out to be life-saving. “When we were walking back to the room, there was already a team of doctors waiting in the room with him, and they had the X-ray pulled up, which showed the button battery in his throat,” Dunn explained.

“They were saying he’d swallowed a button [battery]; it’s code red. They started shoving honey down his throat and getting him prepared to rush him into surgery.” Button batteries are small, coin-sized batteries commonly used in household items such as remote controls, watches, and toys.

When swallowed, they can lodge in a child’s throat and react with saliva, creating an electrical current that causes rapid, severe burns. According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), this can result in esophageal perforation, vocal cord paralysis, or erosion into the trachea or nearby blood vessels, in as little as two hours.

There are more than 3,500 cases of button battery ingestion reported in the U.S. each year, and that number continues to rise. Following emergency surgery, Kai was left with a hole burned into his esophagus and required a feeding tube. “I kept asking them if they knew if my baby was going to live or not, and they told me that they couldn’t say because of the hole,” Dunn said.

Fortunately, the hole eventually healed, and Kai was able to return home. However, his recovery is ongoing. Due to scarring, his esophagus must be stretched weekly under anesthesia. Though his feeding tube has been removed, Dunn says he still faces “eight to ten more procedures.”

She now urges parents to double-check their children’s toys. “If toys do have button batteries in them, make sure they’re secure and the back is tight,” she warned. “Every single day, I just keep thinking that we got lucky.”