There are times when even the most enjoyable things can be harmful to us. That is what we see in the urgent warning that has been issued by parents after two children almost died within a matter of months.
One of the mothers, who is from Warwickshire, is doing her best to raise awareness of the health risks associated with slushy drinks. Beth Green’s 4-year-old son had to be taken to the hospital after he almost died due to drinking one.
Beth reported on the subject, saying that her child, Albie had gone to a bowling alley with a friend after school last year in October. They played the game and drank a strawberry-flavored slushy. It was only a small drink, but then something unexpected happened.
Beth said that her son’s personality started changing within a matter of minutes. She said: “At about 4.15pm he started getting a bit tired and agitated, he didn’t want to play anymore.
“We just thought he was tired and had a long week at school. When he got in the car he kept saying he was tired. He physically couldn’t keep himself awake, his head kept dropping.”
They took him to McDonald’s to try to make him feel better but he couldn’t eat. He then started hallucinating and clawing at his face.
“It was a really strange experience. He kept screaming ‘no’ and ‘leave me alone’ in his car seat. He was screaming then going floppy again,” Beth explained.
“I thought ‘maybe he has a virus and is agitated’ but he started clawing at himself and couldn’t keep himself awake. He wasn’t responding.”
He was rushed to the emergency room. She said: “At this point, I don’t even recall if he was breathing. He was a dead weight when I carried him through the door, he was unconscious. They were shaking, trying to wake him up but he wasn’t responding.
“They took him to the resus room where they started giving him rescue breaths because he wasn’t breathing by himself and his heartbeat was extremely low. They had to resuscitate him.”
The doctor later told them that if they had gone home instead of coming to the emergency room, their son would not have made it. He stayed in the hospital for three days and then went home.
A woman by the name of Victoria Anderson had a similar scare and she has called for a ban on selling slushy’s to children. This happened after her toddler ‘collapsed and began fitting’ after he drank one of those icy drinks.
She was shopping on January 4 with two of her five children when her youngest son, Angus, asked for a raspberry-flavored drink from the corner shop. He had never had a slushy before, but 30 minutes after drinking it, he became unconscious.
She said that his body went ‘limp and stone cold’ and the paramedics were trying to revive him. According to hospital staff, he had glycerol toxicity as a result of drinking the slushy which left him in a state similar to being intoxicated.
Medics said that most children who get sick after drinking an icy drink suffer from glycerol intoxication. It can cause them to be irritable, suffer from sweating, go into shock, and even lose consciousness.
Since the slushy drinks contain glycerol, the Food Standards Agency has introduced new guidance on selling them. They said that they should not be sold to children age 4 or younger.
Typically, the ingredient does not cause a lot of problems because it is low toxicity. It does not have an impact on older children or adults, but younger children are not able to process the glycerol, which causes the problem.