Nicole and Jake Goddard, of Parker, Colorado, love the movie nights with their three kids. It’s the perfect time for the whole family to get together and have fun.
Their latest movie night, however, turned into a nightmare no one was prepared for.
As they were watching Mrs. Doubtfire and had popcorn, their youngest son, Nash, started coughing badly.
“He started making a gagging noise and [Jake} jumped up really fast to grab him,” Nicole told FOX news. “He was getting ready to do the Heimlich on him and then he took a breath.”
But then, Nash started breathing normally again and they thought it was just a popcorn kernel that he probably managed to swallow. Sadly they were wrong and the truth was much worse than that.
“He seemed completely fine and continued to watch the movie. The only thing we observed was a cough he developed after the episode,” she wrote on the Facebook post.
As it was just a cough, the parents assumed Nash had a cold.
“Monday came and [in the evening] I noticed Nash felt warm and he was super fussy. He had a fever so I gave him Motrin and put him to bed.”
However, as the night was going through, Nicole realized the boy’s breathing was getting harder and harder so she trusted her instinct and called her pediatrician who advised her to rush Nash to the hospital as fast as she could.
There, doctors asked for a chest X-ray and a bronchoscopy which showed how pieces of popcorn were stuck into the boy’s lungs. This led to a severe inflammation which caused pneumonia.
Nash had to undergo a surgery. But once it was over, the inflammation wouldn’t reduce so doctors had to do another procedure on Nash just to make sure that all the six pieces of popcorn from his lungs were removed.
“The second procedure was done and once again the poor guy had to be put under and rolled off to surgery,” Nicole wrote.
Nicole shares this story hoping parents would become aware of the dangers of letting kids under the age of 5 have popcorn.
“We’re so thankful our little man came out ok. All of this over popcorn, which is eaten on a regular basis in our home.”
Many people wished Nash a quick recovery and thanked Nicole for passing the warning down. Who knows, maybe her post and the ordeal her son had to go through would help save other lives.
A woman named Betty Cornutt Slaton was one of the people who stumbled upon Nicole’s post and shared her experience, which sadly, was a tragic one.
“My little brother passed away from a similar incident but didn’t have any symptoms until it was too late. It took an autopsy to find the cause,” she said.