00:0016-year-old Noah Walden is warning people about metal wire grill brushes after a life-threatening encounter.
00:06My dad was grilling out burgers. I had two burgers, and my guess is one of those had the grill
00:13bristle in it.
00:15And a couple days after that, I started getting, like, little irritation around my stomach area.
00:22Kind of felt like, you know, a little bit throbbing, like, needle-y type of pain.
00:26His pain escalated over the next few days.
00:30More intense, like, throbbing.
00:32My mom's like, do you want to go, you know, to the urgent care and, you know, get checked out?
00:38And I'm like, yeah, I'll just sleep it off, you know.
00:41That morning at around, like, 4.30 a.m., I had super intense stomach pains.
00:46I couldn't even sit down on my bed, get alone lay down.
00:50And then I went into my mom's room, and I'm like, you need to take me to the hospital. This
00:54is bad.
00:55At the hospital, a scan showed that he had a bristle in his intestine.
00:58The doctor said that our radiologist was really lucky to find it.
01:02They were rotating through my intestine, and they saw, like, a little bright thing, and they detected that it was
01:08metal.
01:09And, yeah, it's kind of funny, though.
01:11The guy came in and asked my mom if I've eaten anything that I shouldn't be eating.
01:17So, that threw me off for a second when I was sitting in a hospital bed.
01:23I mean, I'm not a toddler of any sort, but my mom started laughing, too.
01:27But they said that it looked like I've eaten a grill bristle from a wired grill brush, and it got
01:33stuck in my intestine.
01:35They cut me open, and they took about three to four inches of my intestine and then cut it out
01:41and then stitched it back up.
01:43Yeah.
01:43So, bowel resection with a nice incision.
01:47Yeah.
01:48Noah's mom said hospital staff was fascinated by what happened.
01:51It's not as common all the way down to the intestines.
01:54It's a little more common in the throat or in the esophagus.
01:57We had a lot of people coming in and out of the hospital room that worked.
01:59They were like, are you the kid that ate the grill bristle?
02:02I'm not sure why they still make these brushes, but they do.
02:06Noah is getting strength back following the surgery and even got a gift to help his recovery.
02:11We ended up getting a gift in the hospital from his sister that was a wooden grill brush.
02:19According to home improvement expert Ron Hazleton, safer ways to clean a grill include using a brush with stainless steel
02:25coils,
02:27using a pumice stone, a putty knife, a scraper, foil, or an onion.
02:33He adds that if you do use a metal brush to grab a magnet.
02:36You just pass it over the grill.
02:39And if there are any bristles on there, you can see right here, it'll pick them up.
02:43Now that Noah's ordeal is over, the Minnesota family says they're not going to be using the same grill anytime
02:49soon.
02:49My dad likes to use the grill to make burgers, but my mom, that's a no-no now.
02:55Yeah.
02:56We're just throwing the grill out.
02:58The whole thing.
02:58Everything.
02:59For Inside Edition Digital, I'm Andrea Swindle.
03:07For Inside Edition Digital, I'm Andrea Swindle.
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