Every once in a while a new social media trend pops up which invites teenagers to do unbelievably stupid things, and inevitably leads to a handful of kids setting themselves on fire, cracking their skulls into pieces, and just generally injuring and hospitalising themselves.
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Well this latest trend may not seem too risky on the surface, but it ended in pain and suffering for one 13-year-old girl over in Liverpool.
Faye Elizabeth said her daughter, who she has not named, had placed magnetic ball bearings on either side of her tongue and cheeks to create the appearance of piercings.
The girl then began vomiting and complaining of stomach pains, with doctors later spotting 10 of the ball bearings inside her on a scan. The balls had lodged themselves in her bowel and appendix.
She was rushed to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, where she underwent emergency surgery. Altogether, medics removed 15 magnetic beads from her body. Fifteen!
Faye told the Liverpool Echo:
They had to take part of her bowel away and re-stitch it. There was one stuck in her appendix so they had to remove that.
I don’t know when she swallowed them because she didn’t admit at first to doing it. I think she was a bit scared of admitting what she’d done.
Apparently she watched a TikTok video where there’s a trend that all the kids are doing at the minute. I haven’t actually seen it but she told me about it and a lot of other children her age have seen it.
They put one of the beads on top of their tongue and one underneath and it makes it look like their tongue is pierced.
And then she saw one where they put a big bead in the side of your cheek and put little beads on top of your cheek and you move it with your tongue so they move on your face.
They’re magnets but because they’re so small they’re easy to swallow.
So obviously you’re not actually meant to swallow the ball bearings, but I guess this young girl just kept accidentally doing so as she tried to perfect the technique and ended up with 15 of the things in her belly. As these things are magnetic they were attracting each other and causing havoc in her intestinal walls. What a disaster!
Faye’s daughter has now been left with a six-inch scar from the operation, and is continuing to recover in hospital. She’s currently being fed through tubes and is in a lot of pain, according to her mum. Look on the bright side though – she could have choked on the beads and skipped the hospital experience altogether. Swings and roundabouts.
