A Melbourne mum has shared the horrifying injuries her six-year-old suffered, in a bid to have the production of metal slap bands stopped.

Jenna Gordon told Mouths of Mums that her daughter Avery received one of the popular toys at Halloween, and was playing with it on November 4, when she suffered the sickening injury. And a warning, this story contains graphic images and descriptions. 

“I was driving with my partner, and three children in the back seat when Avery was explaining that she could use her slap band to measure things. We told her that was great thinking as you could measure by length or width, such as her drink bottle,” Jenna explained.

“She continued to further explain that she said that due to the slap band having measurements on it, so my partner had a look at it and low and behold he was handed an off cut of a measuring tape. The measuring tape had pierced through the thin, poorly made plastic sleeve covering the band.”

The couple told Avery it needed to go back into the plastic sleeve as they were nearly at their destination, and then they would throw it out.

“Within a minute I heard her scream, a scream of fear I never want to hear again, my partner shouted she’s slit her wrist and I immediately slammed my breaks on jumped out the car and held pressure on her wrist to control the bleeding, whilst my partner got in the driver’s seat and drove to the hospital.

“Whilst sitting in the back seat with her, not letting go of any pressure, I saw the blood splattered in the back seat of the car, on the floor, door, seats and all over her clothing. Without looking at the cut yet I immediately knew we were in big trouble.

“After quickly checking the cut I could see all the way down past the fatty layer and exposed veins.”

Avery had hit a smaller artery, narrowly missing her main artery, tendons and vital nerves as depicted by the purple and red lines in the photo above, but she was bleeding profusely.

“I near fainted, I started uncontrollably shaking knowing we didn’t have long to get to the hospital, my fear was that she cut her main artery and that she was going to bleed out,” Jenna said. “Saying I was terrified would be an understatement. I couldn’t believe a slap band could cause this. I thought they would have a protective rubber or plastic over the metal.”

Once they arrived at hospital, Avery was seen by nurses and eventually a paediatrician.

“After hours of consultations with emergency staff, paediatric surgeons and vascular/micro professionals they were able to stitch her up. Avery received four stitches, and as it was the wrist they opened straight back up, so she had to endure four more stitches. She has to wear an arm brace for 3 weeks to support to wrist of further damage. I never want to experience anything like that again.”

The six-year-old hasn’t been able to return to school since the incident and remains traumatised. It’s prompted Jenna to warn parents not to purchase slap bands, and to call for their removal from shelves.

“The manufacturing of these products need to stop. How is this okay that these bands can be sold with sharp off cuts of metal? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

In the US, there have been recalls of some slap bands, due to the metal bands wearing through fabric and causing cuts and lacerations to children.

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