Most parents are fairly concerned about their children’s diet, making sure that most of the time, their kids eat healthy foods.

Sometimes, however, like on holidays or at birthday parties, parents happily let their kids indulge in something less nutritionally beneficial.

After all, everyone deserves a treat sometimes, right? What they don’t expect is that the treat will send their child to the emergency room. A mom was left terrified when her four-year-old daughter became unresponsive after consuming a popular iced drink at a children’s party.

The little girl, Marnie, suddenly fell unconscious, prompting her mother, Kim Moore, to rush her to the hospital. Doctors discovered that Marnie’s blood sugar levels had dropped dangerously low, which was attributed to the drink she had consumed just minutes before losing consciousness.

An Unexpected Turn of Events

At the party, Moore had purchased two one-liter refillable cups for her daughters. Her two daughters would run and play, coming back every few minutes for a sip or two of their slushies.

Marnie, her younger daughter, had only consumed half of her drink. Around 10 minutes later, she suddenly began to show signs of agitation. Marnie then appeared to be quite sleepy, and laid down to take a nap.

Moore initially mistook this for Marnie being overtired, only realizing the severity of the situation when she struggled to wake her daughter, who appeared pale and unresponsive. Marnie had fallen unconscious. 

Moore quickly called emergency services, who came and rushed the little girl to the nearby hospital. Marnie remained unconscious for approximately 25 minutes as doctors worked to raise her blood sugar levels.

She stayed in the hospital for three days as a medical team monitored her blood sugar status and other vital signs. Moore says that she now believes that what her daughter experienced was glycerol toxicity. This is because these slushies used glycerol, a sugar replacement, to sweeten the slushy beverage.

“In hospital, she screamed out in agony saying her head hurt and threw up everywhere,” Moore recalled. “Looking back, she had every single symptom of glycerol toxicity. We got transferred to another hospital and they had no idea what had caused it. We started looking into the slushy because that was the only thing differently she’d had that day.”

Following the distressing ordeal, Moore has become a vocal critic of slushies, describing them as “poison”. She has since begun adamantly advocating against their consumption by children. She expressed a belief that slushies should not be sold to children under the age of 12, emphasizing the trauma her family experienced as a result of Marnie’s illness.

“I personally wouldn’t allow my child to drink one at all. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take,” she said. “I don’t think they should be sold to kids 12 and under in all honesty. I wouldn’t wish what we went through on our worst enemy. It was awful.”