Katelyn Powell says 5-year-old daughter Khloe’s nose wouldn’t stop running.
“Every time you looked at her, you could see there was snot, like there was discharge coming out of her nose,” Powell said. “At first, I just thought, oh, it’s a little cold, no big deal.”
But then, it came with an odor.
“It was the most horrific smell you can ever imagine,” Powell insisted.
With growing concern, she decided to get help.
She took Khloe to three doctors, who all examined her and thought she had some sort of a sinus infection, so they prescribed antibiotics. But none seemed to work.
She says even took her to the dentist, but still nothing. Until last weekend, when the first-grader blew her nose — really hard.
“We blow her nose, and it just shot out,” Powell said.
What came out was a safety pin, about an inch and a half long — longer than a quarter and bigger than Khloe’s nose.
“It was all just rotten and snotty and black!” Powell said. “I was horrified.”
What happened to Khloe is not uncommon. There are about 80,000 cases a year of kids putting foreign objects into their bodies, with the most common being coins and safety pins, according to an online article from the Encyclopedia of Children’s Health.
Now, Powell wants to raise awareness to warn parents about the problem.
“To give them the option to see it out there that this could be what’s going on, because I had no idea,” Powell said.
Khloe admits she forgot she put the pin in there, but she’ll always remember it coming out.
“I just think it’s really disgusting,” Khloe said. “That’s what I think about that.”
