A boy had to have six hours of life-saving surgery after he ingested dozens of magnets for an experiment.
Rhiley Morrison, 12, swallowed 54 magnetic balls to see if he could get metal sticks to his stomach and what they looked like when he went to the toilet.
He swallowed on January 1 and the second on January 4. When they failed to pass through his system, Rhiley woke up his mum Paige Ward, 30, at 2 am and told her that he had swallowed magnets until twice.
An x-ray revealed that there were many more than that and, fearing that they could burn through his organs and kill him, he was rushed to surgery for a six-hour operation.
Rhiley, from Prestwich, Greater Manchester, spent 10 days unable to move without vomiting up a green liquid caused by his bowel leaking and he had to be fed through a tube.
Paige said, “Rhiley is massively into science, he loves experiments, he eventually admitted “I tried to stick magnets to me, I wanted to see if this copper would stick to my belly while the magnets were in. It’s just so silly, but he’s a child and that’s what kids do. He also thought it would be fun seeing them come out the other end.”
Rhiley was released from the hospital after more than two weeks.