Recently, I had this ten-year-old boy, who came to me with a four-day-old injury. Apparently, the boys were playing rather boisterously at school. As is usual children, especially if they have not been cautioned earlier, quite forget that even everyday objects can be quite dangerous. While horsing around, one of the children drove the nicely sharpened point of his pencil into the child’s arm.
There was some bleeding, that quickly stopped. When the boy came home, the parents applied some antiseptic ointment and forgot about it. A couple of days later the boy felt something hard under the skin with mild pain at the site. When this persisted for another day or two, the parents went to the local family doctor who advised an ultrasound. The ultrasound confirmed that the point of the pencil was indeed lodged in the fat with a blood vessel closeby.
The next day the parents came to me and I removed the embedded pencil point surgically under general anesthesia.
So why remove the pencil point?
- Infection: The embedded pencil point can have germs coating the surface. This happens almost certainly if the child has been putting the pencil in his mouth. Of course, almost all children do that! Yours don’t? Great, you must have talked to them about it.
- Migration: Contrary to what we imagine, embedded foreign bodies tend to move around within the body. Foreign bodies can erode into important blood vessels, nerves, or organs and cause devastating damage many years after the initial event, and long after it has been forgotten.
Could this child develop lead poisoning?
Not really. Though pencils are still referred to as lead pencils, the core is made up of graphite replacing the lead in the pencil long back. Graphite is an inert substance and does not cause ill-effects of poisoning like lead.
Educate your children
- Talk to them – discuss these things before they actually happen. Then, of course, it is too late for your child at least.
- Anything that is sharp can cause significant, and sometimes, life-threatening injuries. With excellent sharpeners that are now available (I remember, we used to sharpen our pencils with half a razor blade that was a big source of danger in itself), it is quite easy to have a finely honed and deadly point. Pencils have found their way into people’s eyes, ears, through the roofs of their mouths, into body cavities, etc.
- Teach your kids that if you yourself or your friends have sharp objects in their hands, stop horsing around immediately, till the object has been put away. You are not a sissy, you are just a caring child, who does not want to injure oneself, or others.
- The best way to teach your kids? Set an example! If you are extra careful when you are handling any sharp objects or glass, you are ingraining a lesson deeply into the consciousness of your child. Your children will not forget these lessons and will pass them on to their own kids.
You can never be too careful to ensure safe home and playing conditions for your precious little children. Check out our articles on accidents and their prevention