ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO (KMOV/CNN) - Fourteen-month-old Andi Jackson found trouble in the most unsuspecting way.
“I was terrified,” said her mom, Lisa Jackson, who with her husband found themselves in a bizarre situation. With four young daughters, the couple baby-proofs everything in their home.
One thing they never gave a second thought about was a tiny jingle bell.
After Andi showed up with the jingle bell on her finger, “We all laughed for a second, because she is the mischievous one,” Lisa said.
But Lisa and Sean Jackson quickly realized this wasn’t a laughing matter. The green jingle bell wouldn’t budge; it was firmly locked around Andi’s index finger. The parents used baby oil, but it wouldn’t slide off.
After Andi’s finger started bleeding, they rushed her to a local emergency room, where a doctor said something that shocked them.
“She said, ‘I’m not touching this. I’ve never seen anything like this,’” the mother said.
They were advised to take Andi to St. Louis Children’s Hospital. By then, their toddler was screaming in pain, and local anesthesia wasn’t calming her down.
Before doctors took Andi into the operating room, they told the couple they couldn’t make any promises.
“‘We can’t say her finger will be saved. We can’t guarantee it,’” Lisa Jackson said a doctor told her and her husband. “This is serious. At this point it was on five hours.”
Emergencies like this one might seems like one in a million, but doctors at Children’s Hospital said they see plenty of injuries around the holidays.
“I think the small items in gifts or ornaments, things that go on the outside of a package that a child can pull at, that can always be a problem,” said Dr. Brad Warner. He added that some of the scariest holiday injuries among children include swallowing toy batteries and magnets.
The Jacksons were told that it might have taken a diamond saw to cut the bell from their daughter’s finger, something that could leave her with an additional injury.
But a doctor using something the parents described as “high-tech needle nose pliers” was finally able to get the bell removed.
It left Andi’s tiny arms bandaged up, and she will need follow-up care.
The Jacksons say they won’t have any jingle bells in their home around the holiday, and this has reinforced just how quickly a small child can find a potentially dangerous object. They hope their experience will help other parents identify potential hazards in their homes.
Copyright 2017 KMOV via CNN.
