Culprit: Wire Barbecue Brush Caught In Intestines Of Mountlake Terrace Teen
Summertime is the biggest barbecue season of the year, and a not-so-known culprit could have you or your loved ones in the hospital.
It’s something that Tristen Beck of Mountlake Terrace never even thought of until just recently. After a couple of weeks of excessive vomiting and a bad stomachache, his parents took him to Seattle Children’s Hospital. Here, doctors ran a battery of tests, trying to find an answer as to why Beck was violently sick.
On Sunday, Beck underwent exploratory surgery and they found the culprit: the tiny wire grill brush – no bigger than a short hair strand – was stuck in the small intestine.
He said he believes a tiny hair-like wire got stuck to the grill, then into the chicken he consumed, which made its way through his body and into the intestine where it was stuck and stabbing at him repeatedly.
Beck will make a complete recovery of a not-so-well-known safety hazard experts say happens more than most folks believe.
According to both the U.S. Consumer Product Safety and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no information on these kinds of accidents – a grill brush wire making it onto food and being ingested to puncture an area of the body.
One Rhode Island Hospital radiologist Dr. David Grand said incidents like Beck’s should be considered life threatening and occurs throughout the nation. He said a big reason for the “supposed rarity” is that when doctors remove a wire piece from the body, they don’t realize it’s from a grill brush.
Beck, who is an Inglemoor High sophomore, had his ordeal begin on April 27 after he consumed chicken off the grill. On May 1, he began to have stomach pain during school. After he got home, he began to profusely vomit… some of it came with blood. He was taken to the hospital on Friday. Routine tests found nothing and Beck was going to be sent home.
One test found there was a bowel obstruction so doctors conducted the exploratory surgery on Sunday. After an hour into the surgery, the surgeons found the wire.
Beck’s mom Beth said the family was obviously stunned by the news, saying her son could have died. She said it’s her hope that people will stop using the wire grill brushes to avoid the same fate her son experienced.
Beck said he’ll someday barbecue again, just not with a wire grill brush.
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This headline and story is sensationalist and misleading. A WIRE from a grill brush was caught in his intestines. This headline makes it sound like the entire brush. How does this even make the news? Ridiculous. Your publication should be ashamed.