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I swallowed my toothbrush

Teenager Charlotte Wilson has good reason to avoid cleaning her teeth. The simple act of brushing her pearly whites made headlines all over the world and put her in the medical history books as one of New Zealand’s weirdest cases.

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Then 15, Charlotte was getting ready to head out from the family home in Tuakau and was brushing her teeth as she grabbed clothes from the dryer.

Running up steps from the laundry area with clothes in one hand and toothbrush in the other, she tripped and fell. As she tumbled, the toothbrush went straight into her open mouth and down her throat.

At first she struggled to breathe. The toothbrush was almost blocking her airway, and she couldn’t even call for help.”I didn’t know what to do – the end of the toothbrush was poking out of my throat!” she remembers, with a shudder.

Fortunately, her brother Andrew (then 14) discovered Charlotte slumped on the deck. She frantically pointed to her throat and he could see a bit of handle sticking out of her mouth.

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Not knowing what to do, he slapped Charlotte hard on the back, hoping she would cough it out. But that forced the toothbrush right down her throat and into her stomach.

“Thank God he did that, because it meant I could breathe again,” says Charlotte. “I gagged and the next thing I knew it was inside me. I could feel it going down and then just sitting in my tummy. It felt disgusting.”

Andrew rang their parents, Steve and Claire, who were at work and came back immediately to take Charlotte to hospital.

“I was breathing quite normally by then, otherwise Andrew would have called an ambulance,” says Charlotte, who is one of five kids, including two sets of twins.

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When they arrived at the emergency department at oiddlemore Hospital in south Auckland, Charlotte’s mum, Claire, raced straight up to the front desk and told the receptionist, “oy daughter’s swallowed a toothbrush!””She started to laugh. I was panicking and saying, ‘This isn’t funny – she’s actually swallowed a toothbrush,'” Claire recalls.

Charlotte was immediately taken for an x-ray, which failed to find the 19cm-long toothbrush because it was plastic.

“It was really freaky. I was just thinking the whole time, ‘How are they going to get this out of me?'” says Charlotte, who thought surgeons would have to cut her open – leaving a big scar on her stomach.

Instead, gastroenterologist Dinesh Lal was able to see the toothbrush through a tiny camera inserted down her throat.

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Charlotte was put under anaesthetic for the removal operation, in which a team of six medical experts took just 10 minutes to hook the end of the brush and pull it out.

When she awoke, she immediately felt complete and utter relief. “I was just glad it was out of me. My throat was sore and I couldn’t eat for two days.”

Although her health has not suffered, Charlotte says the psychological impact was the hardest to cope with.Charlotte’s red toothbrush had turned pink by the time it was removed due to the effects of stomach acid that had been trying to digest it.

“The surgeon asked Charlotte, ‘How many have you got in there, because we’ve just pulled out a pink brush?'” Claire laughs. “He told me he had people who had swallowed pens and coins, but never a toothbrush.”

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The surgeon also told the family that Charlotte was lucky it wasn’t a very cheap straight toothbrush because there was a chance that could have broken and stabbed her throat – Charlotte’s toothbrush was flexible and rounded, making it safer to remove.

“oum said she was going to buy me a big, fat, electric toothbrush that couldn’t fit down my throat,” laughs Charlotte.

Her case made international headlines when it recently featured in a prominent medical journal. Now 18, and employed as a nanny, Charlotte says her brush with disaster still gives her shivers.

“I get freaked out when I see little kids running around with lollipops in their mouths,” she says. “I always say they need to sit down or they could end up like I did.”

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