Doctor Pulls Small Feather Out of Baby's Neck

It may have come from a feather pillow
By Mark Russell,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 14, 2012 8:12 AM CST
Doctor Pulls Small Feather Out of Baby's Neck
This photo shows Mya Whittington in Hutchinson, Kan. The marked area on the neck shows the size of the original swollen infected area that was caused by a feather that she ingested from a pillow.   (AP Photo/The Hutchinson News, Travis Morisse)

Seven-month-old Mya Whittington had been crying and pulling at the skin under her ear for weeks, leading her parents to think she might be teething. They had no idea how wrong they were. The left side of her face finally began to swell last weekend, leading Mya's parents to take her to the hospital on Sunday. Confused doctors thought it might be a lymph node infection, and tried and failed to drain the area. A few hours passed, then something white and string-like began to emerge from the bump. A shocked pediatrician pulled out a two-inch feather, reports ABC News.

Doctors suspect the feather came from a feather pillow, but no one knows how it made its way into Mya's neck. The doctors' "best guess is that she either inhaled it or tried swallowing it and it got lodged in the throat somewhere, and the body, just being crazy, just started to reject it and force it out the side of her neck," said Mya's father, Aaron. Mya is now "almost 100% recovered," and won't need any surgery. (More Mya Whittington stories.)

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