This isn’t the post that I had planned for today but something happened last night that made me hug my children a bit harder before bed and has had me feeling sad all day today so this is my attempt to try and help stop it from happening again.
Last night, at 7pm, a little boy’s life support machine was switched off in a town very close to where I live. He’d been in hospital since last Friday when a family meal out to Pizza Hut ended in tragedy as he choked on a grape.
I don’t know the exact details but what I do know is that it’s a terrible story that’s touched so many people locally. I’m not a person who prays but I’ve prayed for this little boy to recover and get back to being the smiley boy that I keep seeing photos of.
Last night there was a gathering of hundreds of local people who released yellow balloons to show that they were thinking of him and his family and at the exact time that the balloons were released, the little boys devastated parents made the awful decision to turn off his life support machine. They chose that time because they knew that so many people would be thinking of him right then.
Like many others, I cried when I read that he’d passed away and I’ve been feeling sad all day today.
It’s such a tragedy and I can’t imagine how the parents must be feeling right now, I don’t ever want to experience the pain that they must be going through!
I want to do something but I don’t know what so until I think of something I’m going to ask you to share this post and the photo below so that as many people as possible realise the dangers of not slicing grapes before you give them to your young children. You need to slice them lengthways and not across because doing this will mean that if they do choke then the sliced grapes won’t cause a complete blockage of the airways hopefully.
Apparently, around 29,000 under-15s have to go to A&E every year after choking on something or swallowing non-toxic items other than food. That’s 80 children every day and the vast majority of the casualties are young children. I can’t find any stats anywhere about how many of these visits end as tragically as this little boy’s did but I have found out that at least one child dies in the US every five days from choking on their food! That’s just staggering and so much more than I would have thought.
So as well as taking note about the grapes (I know so many of you already will do this but not everyone does), please also take 30 seconds to watch this video that I came across on YouTube which tells you how to help a choking baby or toddler. It really could happen to you….
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