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Lifestyle & Human Interest

5-Year-Old Girl Unable to Eat After Intestines Are Sucked Out of Body in Swimming Pool Accident

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Many parents have probably wondered at some point or another, as their kids are frolicking in pools to beat the summer heat, just how strong those suction valves and drains at the bottom of the pool are.

Kids are both curious and oblivious, a dangerous combination, and there are several gruesome stories out there of very unfortunate accidents involving children sitting on pool drains and being disemboweled as a result.

Salma Bashir was one of those children.

According to The Sun, the incident happened when Salma was traveling with her family in Egypt. At the time, the little girl was only 5, and she went for a dip in a “baby” pool.

While splashing around in the water, at some point Salma sat down. She ended up sitting on the kiddy pool’s suction valve — and the force of it tore her intestines right out of her.

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“I was just swimming,” Salma told Barcroft TV. “All of a sudden, I just sat on it by accident.”

She explained that “the lifeguard tried to pull me out, and he couldn’t because the suction was so much.” Eventually, Salma got free, but the damage was already done.

“I found someone carrying her and all her intestines came out from her body,” her mother, Dena Ghaly, said. “I couldn’t believe that it was intestine I thought at the beginning it was her swimming suit.”

Salma explained that she had passed out, and unconsciousness proved a mercy. She wasn’t awake for the worst parts of her ordeal.

A quick trip to a Pennsylvania hospital saved the girl’s life, but she found herself caught in an untenable situation. As a visitor, she couldn’t qualify for health insurance or any kind of public assistance.

What’s more, a GoFundMe campaign for assistance with her medical expenses revealed that a small-intestine transplant attempted during the early days of her condition failed.

Removing the dead tissue meant that doctors also had to take her large intestine and gall bladder, and her stomach remained an exposed wound.



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“My stomach was open so bad, we could literally see my insides,” Salma said. “It’s filled with tissue, so thankfully you can’t really see insides or anything, but it’s leaking 24-seven.”

Eating is a luxury that Salma no longer experiences. Instead, she gets all of her nutrition from, in her words, “a bag full of fluids with all the nutrition you need, such as calcium, sodium, glucose, all the vitamins and everything you need.”

Salma would like to be able to eat, but her body simply can’t handle solid matter.

She still chews the food her mother makes to enjoy the taste of it but has to carefully spit it out once she’s done enjoying the flavors.

“I’m about four foot three, so I’m very small,” she stated.

“The reason I don’t absorb food is because I don’t have the intestines at all. So there’s nowhere for it to go if I eat anything.”

While accidents like Salma’s don’t occur in many pools — and lately more measures have been taken to outfit pools carefully to avoid these kinds of disasters — it is a good idea to be cautious around pools with uncovered suction drains or children’s pools that share the main pool’s filter system, which dramatically increases its power.



There is still hope for Salma. She learned that she is eligible for a transplant, but she would need to have her small intestines, large intestines, pancreas, liver and stomach replaced, which would cost an astonishing $3 million.

So far Salma has raised about $53,000 through her GoFundMe campaign, but her mother says she hasn’t given up hope. “She’s doing very good things with her condition,” she said.

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A graduate of Wheaton College with a degree in literature, Loren also adores language. He has served as assistant editor for Plugged In magazine and copy editor for Wildlife Photographic magazine.
A graduate of Wheaton College with a degree in literature, Loren also adores language. He has served as assistant editor for Plugged In magazine and copy editor for Wildlife Photographic magazine. Most days find him crafting copy for corporate and small-business clients, but he also occasionally indulges in creative writing. His short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines. Loren currently lives in south Florida with his wife and three children.
Education
Wheaton College
Location
Florida
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Entertainment, Faith, Travel




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