Bath toys are often used by parents who wish to keep their children entertained while they are bathing them; however, in the year 2020, a mother discovered a terrifying truth about utilizing bath toys. The mother, whose name is Eden Strong, finally decided to talk about her ordeal on Facebook on September 21, 2020, after much internal conflict over whether or not to do so. She ultimately made the decision to divulge the information in order to serve as a cautionary tale for others so that they would avoid experiencing the same thing.
“I was aware that there was a risk of water becoming stuck in tub toys, especially rubber toys that were made to spray water. I’ve seen the threads where moms have opened them up and found an excessive amount of mold on the inside. I was aware. Therefore, after each wash I would give them a good squeeze, once every few weeks I would clean them with a bleach water solution, and on a regular basis I would hold them up to the light to check for mold,” Strong said.
She was unaware of the fact that germs may continue to develop on the toys so long as they were not allowed to dry completely.
Strong’s nanny relayed the story to Strong one day as she emerged from the bathroom with Strong’s kid, Baylor, in tow. “Baylor squirted himself in the eye with a tub toy,” she said. Strong saw that one of her kid’s eyes was “a little bit red,” but she attributed it to the water that had been squirted into his eye. Strong’s son had accidentally poked himself in the eye. However, by the time they sat down to eat, the condition of the eye had worsened, so she instructed her husband to take him to the hospital.
The physician agreed with Strong’s diagnosis that Baylor had pink eyes and prescribed eye drops for him as a treatment. Around midnight, Strong made the decision to apply some more, only to discover that her son’s eye had swollen to a size that was twice as large as it had been before. Even his face was beginning to become crimson.
Because I consider myself somewhat of an online medical expert, my first thought was that he could be getting cellulitis. As a result, I insisted that we go to the emergency room. There, a different physician concurred with my diagnosis once again and issued him a prescription for oral antibiotics, which we filled and delivered to him at 2:30 in the morning,” she went on to say.
Strong was taken aback when he saw Baylor’s face at six in the morning since he had anticipated that the redness would have faded by then.
“His eye was so swollen that the white part was bulging out from between his eyelid, and his iris was being obscured,” Strong recounted. A check of his temperature revealed that he was running a high fever, and he felt hot to the touch as well.
She immediately contacted her husband, and the two of them hurried Baylor to a larger hospital, all the while the woman sobbed the whole way there. As soon as possible, intravenous antibiotics were administered to Baylor, and a CT scan was performed to examine his retina since the swelling in his face was rather severe.
“The next week was rather terrifying. He was suffering from acute cellulitis, which ultimately went all the way down his face and into both of his eyes. They cautioned me that he would lose eyesight in the eye that was affected the most, but in the end, praise be to God, his eyes were cured,” Strong said.
She requested that parents dispose of tub toys since they cannot be cleaned properly, which allows germs to remain.
The mother said, “There was never any visible mold to take a picture of, so I don’t have any pictures of moldy tub toys to show here.” “I’ve known that germs are invisible ever since the sixth grade when I took a science class, but I still considered myself to be above unclean tub toys. I was incorrect. So what about those bath toys? Just toss them in the trash.”
Since Strong first shared her experience, her post has been shared more than 300,000 times.