82-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 5, 1993
Three-Year-Old Swallows Acid
Retains Smile, Voice, Life In A
JOYCE BUPP
York Co. Correspondent
GLEN ROCK (York County)
Rebecca Watkins is a pleasant,
outgoing three-year-old. She
smiles a lot, loves to sing and
especially enjoys playing with the
calves and cats on the Glen Rock
R 2 farm of her grandparents, Bar
bara and H. Gene Taylor.
But in the few life-changing
seconds last November, Rebecca
Watkins came close to losing her
smile, her voice her life.
In the milk house while her
mother. Lona Watkins, and her
grandmother were finishing the
evening dairy chores, Rebecca
decided she was thirsty. She
picked up a cup of what she
thought was water and drank
one swallow of acid pipeline
cleaner.
“She screamed once,” recalls
Lona, who had a little earlier acci
dentally poured out the cup of
pipeline cleaner instead of santiz
er, and set the cup aside on the
sink for later use.
Barb Taylor was just a foot
away preparing calf-feeding bot
tles. Even as she and Lona real
ized what had happened, the little
girl’s lips were blistering from the
caustic acid. With Rebecca
already vomiting the liquid. Gene
raced the little girl and her mother
toward York Hospital, alerted that
they were on the way.
He made the more than ten-mile
trip north on 1-83 in ten minutes,
through pouring rain, flashers and
horn warning other vehicles that
yielded to the distress signals.
Emergency personnel met them at
the door and whisked the dark
haried little girl to immediate care.
Thougth they tried to pump her
stomach, Rebecca’s throat had
already swelled too thickly to
June Dairy Baby Debuts
Lancaster County Dairy Princess Jill Hamlsh, left, presents a basket of dairy pro
ducts to Gary, Julie and baby Jesse Ryan Zimmerman of LttHz. Baby Jesse won the
race to become the June Dairy Baby, the first baby bom on June 1, among five county
hospitals. He weighed In at 8 pounds 9 ounces at 2:14 a.m. His mother holds a picture
of his 2-year-old brother Joel. The county Dairy Promotion Committee distributed 30
dozen T-shirts with the “I Love Milk” slogan, which will be given to all babies bom at
the five hospitals during June In celebration of June Dairy Month.
allow insertion of the tubes. Ster
oids were administered in an
attempt to reverse the swelling.
“When they got ready to admit
her to Intensive Care, 1 realized
just how bad it was," Lona
remembers. She would later learn
that Rebecca’s bums, third-degree
to the stomach and esophagus and
second-degree in her mouth, were
the worst of this type that the York
Hospital emergency personnel
had ever seen.
“The family and several chur
ches were called for prayers for
Rebecca.” emphasizes grand
mother Barb Taylor.
“The next day, Friday the 13th,
was the day they told me she
might not make it,” Lona adds. On
Saturday, Rebecca was loaded
into an ambulance and moved to
Penn State’s Hershey Medical
Center.
“The entire area of her esopha
gus had been corroded away, with
some corrosion of the stomach,
from the caustic ingestion,”
explains Dr. Peter Dillon, assistant
professor of surgery and pediatrics
at the Penn State Children’s Hos
pital at Hershey. “It made the
whole esophagus and stomach
quite inflamed, which in turn had
to form one big, thick scar.”
After three days in ICU at “Her
shey Bar Hospital,” as Rebecca
called the medical center, doctors
were seeing some improvement.
A week after her admittance, she
was eating and allowed to go
home. Doctor Dillon had told
Lona that Rebecca’s prognosis
ranged from possible full recovery
on her own to the worst-case sce
nario of having to remove esopha
gus and stomach, where the caus
tic acid had completely destroyed
the linings.
“The injury is done within split
seconds of swallowing such a sub-
Rebecca Wall is >«.. is a. ippy, jolng personality after three hospital
stays and esophagus transplant surgery following a farm accident.
stance,” adds the surgeon. “There
is not much a family can do once it
happens, except to come to a
children’s center for care. Do
nothing else to intervene; inducing
vomidngt is bad because it may
just further expose the esophagus
to further damage. You have to let
the body run its course, and then
treat the damage. It’s a matter of
time.”
Through her ordeal, Rebecca
remained amazingly calm and
cooperative with doctors and
nurses through continuing
sometimes-painful medical proce
dures and administration of vari
ous medications. But her initial
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