On June 8th, 2025 a 2-year-old boy choked on a marble. Protocol was followed. LifeVac successfully dislodged the food on its second attempt. The child’s mother described the incident as follows:
“I want to start by saying that we have four boys, our oldest is 10 and our youngest is 2. We have a marble track toy; I used to be very vigilant about keeping all the marbles in the plastic bag and in the cabinet and only taking it down while it was played with and then counting all the marbles and putting it back. At some point I guess we became complacent and this bag of marbles was kept in the box of marble run pieces in my older boys’ room. They were all playing upstairs while my husband and I were sitting at the kitchen table. Suddenly our 10-year-old screamed to us, and I can’t even tell you what he said exactly, but on my way upstairs I grabbed the LifeVac off the top of the fridge. It was a really terrifying experience and unfortunately all three of the other boys were watching this happen. My husband was the one to use the LifeVac and unfortunately, he placed the adult mask on the device first. Afterwords I realized I had the child mask in my hand and I had taken it out of the packaging. I really thought I was going to watch him die but after using the device several times with back blows in between the marble came out. I don’t recall him ever turning blue and I believe he was gasping so it was not fully blocking his airway. Once it came out, he cried and he turned pink from crying and then he settled down. He is doing fine now. I’m not sure what lasting impact it will have on him but later that day he said “out my mouth, daddy got it out my mouth.” I think myself and my seven-year-old are especially struggling to “cope” with the events. The next morning, I messaged some family and friends to let them know what happened and to give them the link to your device and encourage them to purchase it if they didn’t already have it. We have some mental trauma to sort through but otherwise I am so thankful to have purchased this from wherever I saw it (likely social media) and have had it stored in a location that I looked at every day so that I didn’t have to think about where it was stored in the moment.”
Aryssa W.
