Watch out for that summer barbecue!

I learned of a new danger from the simple, ordinary barbecue grill today.  CBS New York reports:

A New Jersey man’s brush with death last week was apparently due to a grilling tool.

Michael DeStefan went to Hackensack University Medical Center thinking he had appendicitis after experiencing excruciating pain in his stomach.

Doctors conducted tests and found a 1½-inch-long metallic object had pierced the 54-year-old’s large intestine. They thought he had swallowed a nail, fish hook or paper.

. . .

DeStefan’s wife figured out one of the metal bristles on his grill brush broke off, got stuck to the grill grate and embedded itself in the shell steak her husband had cooked and eaten days before visiting the hospital.

Doctors performed emergency surgery to remove the wire and repair the hole that it made in DeStefan’s large intestine.

“There was an infection, they just didn’t know how big the infection was, or how much of a hole it had torn inside my intestines, and they didn’t know that until they went in,” DeStefan said. “When I went under he told me I have to do this immediately, because we don’t know what we’re going to find, and there’s a chance that you might not make it.

There's more at the link, including an audio report.

Worth remembering!





Peter