Thanks To This 7-Month-Old Baby I Now Have Pteronophobia
From the Daily Mail, everyone’s favorite source for truly scary news:
A seven-month-old girl was taken to hospital Saturday by concerned parents after an area just below her jaw swelled up to the size of one and a half golf balls with a pimple on top.
After initially diagnosing an infection, doctors were shocked when they discovered a two-inch-long black feather had got lodged underneath Mya Whittington’s skin.
Aaron and Emma Whittington first took their nearly seven-month-old daughter to Hutchinson Regional Medical Center, Kansas on Saturday after the area below her jaw swelled up.
OK, so no biggie, the concerned parents were worried but the doctors treated the baby with antibiotics and scraped off a scab that had formed. But then later, things got really creepy:
When Mya’s pediatrician visited later that evening, however, she asked what it was. She then put on a pair of gloves and plucked a two-inch-long black feather from the swollen area of the child’s neck.
They suspect, Whittington said, that the baby swallowed or inhaled the feather, which apparently pierced the inside of her cheek or throat and then, over time, her body forced it out the other way.
Argh! Horror movie time! Black Swan time! I always cuddle my kids in my bed which not only has down pillows on it, but also a down duvet! Mya is such an adorable little baby and now to freak you out even further, this is a photograph of what her face looked like.
That poor baby! Those poor parents! What a terrible thing to go through, and if the hard knot that has formed doesn’t go down on its own, May will have to have surgery to remove it. Having kids is scary enough with worrying about so many things, and now we get to add feathers to our ever-growing list of fears. I know a lot of parents have just weird things happen to their kids that result in midnight trips to the emergency room, but I have been lucky that my own children haven’t had any freak childhood accidents, not even a broken bone here. I’m going to be super paranoid about the pillows they sleep with even though I’m sure this usually only happens with little babies. I never even knew that I had a phobia of feathers, also known as pteronophobia, until now. Forget bicycle safety and hiding the cleaning products out of reach, I’m totally going to childproof all of my pillows.
(photo: Facebook) (photo: Galushko Sergey /shutterstock)