Three days of agony for Toshita and her parents ended in three hours at the Fortis Hospital.
Three days of agony for Toshita and her parents ended in three hours at the Fortis Hospital. The 11-month-old girl from Navi Mumbai recently had a 2-cm-diameter wooden object lodged in her throat, which went undetected by a neighbourhood physician.
While mother Tanuja Khanolkar was busy in household chores on November 11, Toshita approached her, pointing at her throat. “She was trying to tell me that something was stuck in her throat. I saw a round object stuck deep inside her throat. When I tried to remove it, it went further in to the point that it was not visible anymore,” said Khanolkar.
The alarm bells were set off when Toshita began salivating and complained of uneasiness. The mother rushed her to a physician in the neighbourhood. “He inserted a 7-inch pipe inside her throat. Since it went through the throat without any hindrance, the doctor ruled out the possibility of a coin being stuck in the throat.”
He suggested a chest X-ray when the child continued to complain of uneasiness. But the test did not reveal the presence of any foreign object in the chest. “We believed the doctor. He claimed that the uneasiness was because Toshita was scared and assured that she’d be fine in some time.”
But over the next two days, Toshita refused food and continuously cried. “She felt hungry, but the moment I fed her, the food came out. She complained of uneasiness, cried a lot and kept asking for water,” said Khanolkar.
Toshita’s parents realised that things had got out of hand when she started spitting blood. They immediately tried to book an appointment with a paediatrician. “He was not available at the hospital, though, since it was a weekend. We waited till Monday morning,” said Geetesh Khanolkar, Toshita’s father.
An X-ray of the throat revealed that a round, wooden object was stuck in her throat.
The object was placed right above the voice box. “It’s shocking that the doctor couldn’t detect it. Toshita was lucky that it didn’t obstruct her windpipe,” said paediatrician Dr Ashok Gavade.
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