Barbie ring stuck in girl's throat for five months

Sophie Oliver, now 8, was 4 when a Starship surgeon found and removed a toy ring that had been lodged in her airway for five months. Photo / Brett Phibbs

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As an infant, Sophie Oliver had a children's Barbie ring stuck in her throat for five months before it was removed by a surgeon at Starship.

At age 4, Sophie had been playing with her older sister Siobhain's ring when it went down her throat and got stuck in her airway. The steel ring has a love heart on it which is inscribed with the name Barbie. The Oliver family, of Tuakau, south of Auckland, still have the ring, which caused Sophie so much trouble.

Sophie, now 8, had been unwell and suffered a bad coughing fit at home when she was 4. Her mother, Sue-Anne Oliver, a nurse, thought Sophie was choking on sputum and rushed her to a doctor, but the cause was not discovered.

Five months and 11 medical visits passed. Sophie was repeatedly prescribed antibiotics but her condition only worsened.

"She lost weight. She was looking like a walking skeleton with her head on one side. She couldn't eat," Mrs Oliver said.

Even the thought of cancer crossed Mrs Oliver's mind because the cause of Sophie's condition still was not clear.

But a breakthrough came after her tonsils were suspected and she was taken to a Starship ear, nose and throat surgeon at his private practice. He wondered if Sophie might have swallowed a foreign body. An x-ray was done and, sure enough, she had. "The radiologist was struck speechless momentarily as the x-ray revealed a ring was lodged in Sophie's trachea. We were overwhelmed with emotion, both relief and terror."

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The trachea is the airway leading from the back of the throat to the lungs.

Sophie was taken to Starship in central Auckland.

In theatre, she was anaesthetised and the surgeon removed the ring, which, because of its five-month residence in the trachea, had become embedded, Mrs Oliver said.

"She remained in the children's intensive care unit for three days in an induced coma to give her breathing a little help due to all the inflammation and scar tissue."

Two later procedures followed in theatre under general anaesthetic to check on the healing of the damaged tissue, and Sophie visited the surgeon again before getting the all-clear.

Her treatment is not the Tuakau family's only experience of Starship's theatres. Sophie's younger brother Matthew, now 6, had a hernia-repair operation there when he was 5 weeks old.

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Mrs Oliver paid tribute to Starship as an "amazing hospital [with an] amazing specialised team of doctors, anaesthetists and nurses. Without them our outcome may have been so different".

She encouraged people to donate to the Herald's Help Our Kids campaign to raise money for equipment for the new theatre being built at Starship and the four that are being refurbished.

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