Girl dies from eating mattress
THE doctors had realised what was happening. Time of death 3:05am. But Sarah’s mother did not know. She kept touching her daughter’s feet.They were cold. She tried to cover them, but they could not get warm. -
THE doctors had realised what was happening. Time of death 3:05am. But Sarah’s mother did not know. She kept touching her daughter’s feet.
They were cold. She tried to cover them, but they could not get warm. She kept feeling the feet several times and pulling the covers over Sarah.
The doctors stood back respectfully, perhaps leaving her to say her goodbyes. Sarah was not there anymore. She had already reached the end of her journey on earth.
The doctors asked her mother to step out. She waited for less than two minutes, but it seemed like forever. Her heart beat faster; she could feel anxiety choking her. Then one of the doctors came out of Sarah’s hospital room and broke the news: “Sarah has died.”
Sarah’s mother was speechless. She tried to speak, but the words could not come out. Her lips were moving, but she could not form the words. Suddenly, she wailed. The pain was instant. It was physical. She could feel it tearing through her, like someone was cutting through her heart with a sharp razor blade.
“I love you mom,” were Sarah’s last words. It is clear that the pain of Sarah’s death won’t let up.
Today, as her mother sits across the table during the interview, she looks composed and confident.
She is a pretty young woman with a beautiful head on her shoulders, a gleaming heart and the compassion of 1,000 women.
But something still looks amiss. As she speaks about Sarah, you can see the cracks in her armour. It is like the rug was pulled from under her feet too hard.
But this is not Sarah’s biological mother, and yet she is her mother.
Who is Sarah?
Sarah began living in a children’s home in 2008. She was six years old. Soon after her arrival at the home, the caretakers, whom the children refer to as aunties, noticed she ate everything that came her way, including balloons which the children loved to play with after a birthday of one of the 17 children in this home had been celebrated.
She chewed and swallowed plastic pen lids, rubber bands and paper, but most of all she ate pieces of her mattress.
“We spoke with her immediately and told her to ask for food whenever she felt hungry. But it continued.
She told the caretakers that she was not hungry. When they tried to press her to eat more food during meal time, she failed to finish her food,” one of the caretakers says.
Sarah was punished by sitting in a corner, but the habit persisted, especially at night. She would tear her mattress cover and eat the sponge while the rest of the children slept.
While the caretakers were concerned about Sarah’s habit, they also assumed she eventually excreted what she ate but this was not the case.
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