Little Girl Turns Blue And Throws Up Blood, Dies For Frighteningly Simple Reason

An Oklahoma family is warning other parents about the dangers of button batteries after their toddler daughter died from swallowing one.

It was the day after Christmas, and 2-year-old Brianna Florer was playing with her older siblings and opening presents in her grandparents’ home, NewsOk reported. The next day, she was dead.

“On Saturday she was fine,” grandfather Kent Vice told NewsOK. “It was a perfect Christmas.”

Brianna had been ill with a low-grade fever and was vomiting blood. Her complexion eventually turned a blue color, and that’s when her parents, Brian and Stephanie Florer, called for paramedics.

They met up with the family to check on Brianna’s condition, and she immediately took a turn for the worse.

“She threw up again,” Vice recalled. “It was a massive amount of blood, and they rushed her to the Grove hospital.”

The Grove physicians diagnosed Brianna and quickly rushed her to a nearby hospital for surgery, Vice said. To make matters worse, inclement weather had grounded all medical transportation by helicopter.

“They operated on her for 2½ hours, but they couldn’t stop the bleeding,” Vice said. “They believed the battery ate through to her carotid artery by way of her esophagus.”

An X-ray of the little girl’s body confirmed that she had swallowed a small, shiny silver button battery.

“One minute she is perfect, and the next minute she is dead,” Vice added. “We had no idea when she swallowed [the battery].”

The family was told that Brianna most likely swallowed the battery within six days of her death. Vice said he now wants to warn other families about the dangers of button batteries.

“I want to keep these things out of houses,” he said. “They are dangerous.”

A GoFundMe account was also launched by the family in a bid to help cover funeral expenses for Brianna. Eddie Johnson with the state medical examiner’s office said at the time that it could take two to four months to determine an official cause and manner of death through the child’s autopsy.

From the year 2005 to 2014, there have been 11,940 reported cases of children swallowing batteries, according to the National Capitol Poison Center. Of all of those cases, only 15 children died, the Daily Mail reported.

Experts said that batteries often pass out of the system on their own before causing harm. However, in other cases, the battery can get stuck and secrete an alkaline substance.

Sources: NewsOK, Daily Mail / Featured Image: Lead holder/Wikimedia Commons / Embedded Images: Daily Mail, Facebook via Daily Mail