Aliya Claspbell

EVANSVILLE — An Evansville mother told 14NEWS about a scary situation involving her 3-year-old daughter.

The mother, Crystal Claspbell, said her 2-year-old son put a penny into Aliya’s mouth last month, and she swallowed it.

Fast forward a few days later. After several bouts of vomiting, she took Aliya to the emergency room.

“She was admitted for dehydration,” Claspbell said. “They kept her, I told them about him trying to feed her pennies.”

She said it was one of the most frightening feelings of helplessness.

Not only is little Aliya small, but she has cerebral palsy. The young girl choked on the coin and was admitted to Deaconess for four days.

But even after she was released, Aliya kept vomiting and was re-admitted a few days later.

“They finally did an ultrasound of her belly, which showed nothing wrong with it, so they wanted to do an upper GI the following Monday, but because she wouldn’t swallow the barium because she couldn’t keep anything down, they couldn’t do it,” Claspbell said. “So I got frustrated and had her transferred out of Deaconess up to Peyton Manning Hospital in Indianapolis.”

That’s when a chest x-ray showed a penny lodged in her esophagus.

Claspbell said it had been there the entire time. Doctors surgically removed it the next day.

“Because of the penny being lodged in here that whole time, it has left narrowing of the esophagus which she might have to have another surgery to stretch it out and it has messed up the lining so she’s now on inhalers and medication to help smooth out the esophagus.”

The good news in all of this is little Aliya is recovering at home.

Deaconess Hospital did confirm Aliya was treated at their facility.

Deaconess officials said they’ll be reaching out to the family soon to make sure they did everything they could to treat her.

Source: WTHR