A MUM bought Apple AirTags to keep her children safe at Disneyland – only for it to ‘ironically’ leave her daughter in hospital after swallowing the battery.
Lisa Marie says she purchased four of the tracking devices to ‘keep her children safe’ during a family trip to the theme park, but they ended up causing more harm than good.
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After realising the AirTags were broken during the holiday to the popular resort in Anaheim, California, US, in April, Lisa had stored them away in the glovebox of her car while she waited to get them repaired.
But the mum-of-four was left ‘terrified’ when her daughter Lily Grace made a ‘gulping sound’ from the back of the car on May 23 – and she realised that she’d swallowed one of the batteries.
The four-year-old was rushed to hospital where an x-ray scan revealed that the coin-sized battery had already reached her bowel.
The family faced an agonising four-day weight for Lily to pass the battery in her bowel movements – with her three siblings left ‘fearing she was going to die’.
Button batteries can cause significant damage to the lining of the child’s oesophagus or bowel – in some cases it may have burned through the lining completely to form a hole.
In 2020, two-year-old Johnathan Huff tragically died in Greensboro, North Carolina, after swallowing batteries from a remote control, which burned through his internal organs.
Thankfully Lily was left with no lasting side effects and was able to pass the battery naturally.
Lisa says she had repeatedly warned her children of the dangers of button batteries over the years, with the latest warning issued just two weeks prior to the incident.
In a social media post, Lily says her greatest fear had been a child swallowing a button battery so had repeatedly warned her children of the dangers of them over the years.
She goes on to admit the ‘irony’ of the batteries coming from Airtags she had bought to try to keep the kids safe.
The stay-at-home mum is now urging other parents to ‘throw away’ items containing button batteries.
Lisa said: “I bought the Apple Airtags to keep my kids safe. Disneyland is scary so I bought them to track my kids.
“The things that I thought would keep my kids safe are actually what caused harm.
“The AirTags weren’t working so I put them into our glove box so that we could take them to the Apple Store.
“I never ended up finding one so we came back home and I forgot they were there. I thought I’d eventually get them fixed.
“I didn’t think that my daughter would go into the glove box, let alone open up the Airtags and find a button battery and swallow it.
“She was sat in the back of the car and she made a big gulp sound and told me she’d swallowed a quarter.
“Me and my husband were like what do you mean? Why would you swallow a quarter?
“It was crazy to us that anyone would do that but when she started making sounds, all I thought it my head was that it was a button battery.”
Lisa and her husband Markus, 48, originally from the US but now living in Vancouver Island, Canada, rushed Lily to hospital where an x-ray scan revealed there was a button battery in her bowel.
She didn’t require surgery but the family faced an agonising four-day wait for the button battery to pass through in her bowel movements.
Lisa said: “As a mum, when we figured out it was a button battery I was like okay, her whole insides are burned out. I was on the bathroom floor of the hospital crying.
“It was very emotional and my husband had to dress up in surgery scrubs to see if they could scope it out.
“They couldn’t because it had gone to her bowels already – it was good that it was moving.”
They were then sent home and told to wait four days for things to progress.
“I was giving her laxatives and all kinds of things to try and get this thing out of her.
“I had her on trampolines, on a vibration plate, eating prunes, everything,” she said.
Finally, it did come out, but the emotional toll was a lot for the family.
“I didn’t sleep. It was awful. It was really hard, the other kids were like ‘I hope Lily doesn’t die’.
“I wouldn’t want that to happen to anybody else. It was very scary.”
Lisa is now urging other parents to throw out toys containing button batteries.
Lisa said: “If you have any toys that have button batteries in them then throw them out, get rid of them.
“The hard thing I’ve had is people buy gifts for the kids [which contain button batteries] so they keep showing up in my house.
“It’s like a nightmare that won’t go away. Really educate your kids. Just know that you’re never safe – be over cautious.”