Important! Poison Threat!

I wanted to reach as many people as possible, so I intended to make an attention getting headline! I guess it is more a suffocation threat.

I read a story about a local boy who nearly died after taking a sip of a pretty, colorful, citronella candle. Please pass this on the others. This article was in yesterday’s Johnson County newspaper.

July 23, 2008

Citronella candles seem to go with summer like swimming pools and barbecues.

The sweet-smelling aroma, packaged in colored jars, drives bugs away while adding a festive mood to outdoor gatherings.

But for Brooklyn Walters, the candles recall horrible memories rather than happy times.

Walters’ son, 17-month-old Lance, drank from one of the colorful candles in May, inhaling the oil, nearly suffocating and spending a month in Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.

Walters and her husband, Andrew, could only sit and watch as their son struggled, tubes protruding from his body. Though most of the time Lance was sedated, sometimes he would wake up, look at his parents and wail.

“We just sat and cried with him because we couldn’t do anything,” Walters said.

The southside family’s ordeal started May 25, better known in Indiana this year as race day. Family and friends had gathered at the home of Walters’ father to celebrate the running of the Indianapolis 500.

Under a sunny sky, children and adults swam in the pool and relaxed. Lance was playing on the patio with Walters’ brother.

Her niece, who was swimming, briefly went underwater. All attention was on her to ensure she was OK.

While family members attended to the girl, Lance grabbed a vividly striped candle, knocked the top off and took a sip.

Immediately, he started coughing. Walters, who was in the kitchen watching out of the window, saw him start gagging. The adults around him thought he was choking on something, so they picked up him to try to get it out of his mouth.

Not until they saw bloody saliva dripping from his mouth and smelled the citronella did they realize what Lance had done.

Emergency personnel were summoned, and Lance was given oxygen. The oil in the candle had seeped into his lungs, cutting off his breathing and leaving his body starving for air.

They transported him to Johnson Memorial Hospital in Franklin, where a breathing tube was inserted down his throat. The Walterses were told he would need to be transferred to Riley.

Doctors started giving Lance fluids and put him on 100 percent oxygen. They thought he would be able to breath normally in a matter of days, but Lance’s body wouldn’t respond.

Finally, after 16 days, doctors determined he could breathe on his own.

There was no medication to help Lance clear the oil from his body, just pain medication to make him more comfortable. Regularly, hospital staff would suck some of the fluid out of his lungs.

“The oil was sitting in there, so there was all kinds of yucky stuff coming out,” Brooklyn Walters said.

His parents slept in recliners in Lance’s room.

Soon after Lance came out of his sedation-assisted sleep, his mother got a sign that he would be OK.

“When he first woke up, he hadn’t had any food for two days. He was crying and crying,” Walters said. “He knows baby signs, so he signed ‘bite’ to me, that he was hungry.”

After 29 days in Riley, the family returned home June 23, joined by Lance’s sister, 3-year-old Reese.

Doctors say Lance did not suffer brain damage, and he toddles around the house as active as he used to be.

“He still seems like the same kid. He gets a little more frustrated, but that’s understandable,” she said.

His lungs still are delicate, and he can’t drink liquids because it could seep into his airway. The thinnest food he can eat is applesauce, but solid food is OK. The fluids he needs are provided through a tube that snakes from his nose to his stomach.

Another doctor’s appointment July 30 will indicate if his lungs have healed enough to handle liquids again, Walters said.

Lance will need physical, occupational and speech therapy, but doctors expect him to make a full recovery.

With her son approaching good health again, Walters has turned her focus on alerting people to the dangers of citronella oil and children.

Most parents she has spoken with didn’t realize it was dangerous. Since hearing of Lance’s situation, many have stopped using the candles.

Walters takes issue with the bright packaging of the candles and their easy-to-open lids. The candle Lance drank from did not have a screw-on top and was simple enough for a baby to open.

“We could have lost him,” Walters said. “I don’t want anyone to ever go through anything like that.”

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