Dad stunned by kind-hearted medics' gesture after toddler's ordeal

A speechless dad has thanked kind-hearted paramedics who returned to check on his daughter '“ two weeks after they rushed to her aid when she choked on a pound coin.
Sadie and Maggie Chisholm.Sadie and Maggie Chisholm.
Sadie and Maggie Chisholm.

Maggie Chisholm was left hysterical when the coin became stuck in her throat after playing with her big sister Sadie’s piggy bank.

The one-year-old was rushed to Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital before medics advised she had to be taken to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh.

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But during the frightening ordeal the family left her cardigan behind in the first ambulance.

Her father Steve Chisholm said he was left “speechless” when he answered the door to two paramedics – one of whom had helped that night – who then asked by his daughters’ names if they were both okay, before returning Maggie’s cardigan.

Steve, a journalist at Johnston Press in Edinburgh, said he was caught off guard when the paramedics turned up at his door.

He said: “It’s amazing that people with such hardworking jobs like that can take the time to think about something like this.

“We’re really touched by the whole thing.

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“I wish I’d invited them inside to say thanks, as it meant a lot.

“We just thought the cardigan would have gone to lost property.”

Steve, a former pupil of Balerno High School who now lives in Dunfermline, tweeted about what happened in the hope that the paramedics will know how thankful he is for their kind gesture.

He said his six-year-old daughter Sadie was left very upset by the experience.

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The 33-year-old, who was at work at the time of the accident, said Maggie had been playing with her sister’s piggy bank before their mother, Maree, stepped in to take it away.

Somehow, their youngest had managed to keep hold of a handful of pound coins and she put one of them into her mouth.

Maree, also 33, then heard her daughter starting to choke and reacted quickly by hitting her back to dislodge the coin.

But she dialled 999 when her daughter started repeatedly being sick.

Steve added: “Maree reacted brilliantly.

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“The paramedics were really good when they got here, and they got here quickly.”

When Maggie got to Victoria Hospital the doctors took x-rays and, and after speaking with a consultant by phone, advised that Maggie should be taken to the sick children’s hospital in the capital.

There, she underwent a quick operation to remove the coin.

Steve added: “They had to put her to sleep. We had to help the doctors and nurses by holding the gas over her mouth, as she was too small to get an injection.

“Thankfully it went down her throat, but it could have been a lot worse if it had gone down her windpipe (the air passage from throat to lungs).

“I can not speak highly enough of the doctors who were treating her.”

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