A 10-year-old boy suffered from brain swelling and almost lost his life after drinking six bottles of water in an hour.
Ray Jordan from South Carolina was playing outside with his friends on July 4 when he consumed six bottles of water because it was a hot day.
But only an hour later, he started showing symptoms that made his family very concerned.
Speaking to WIS-TV, his dad Jeff Jordan said: “(Ray) couldn’t control his head or arms or anything. His motor functions were gone.”
The heartbroken family said that Ray outside with his cousins.
“(They were) running circles around the house, a bunch of boys together, jumping on the trampoline.”
Ray was so thirsty because of the hot temperatures and drank so much water in just one hour.
“What we didn’t realize how much he had got,” Ray’s mother, Stacy, expressed.
After an hour, the young boy started throwing up and was rushed to Prisma Health Children’s Hospital as he “almost seemed like he was on drugs, drunk, or even mentally handicapped.”
Tests revealed that Ray suffered from water intoxication.
“They were giving him something to help him urinate as much as possible to get those fluids out because it was swelling around his brain – that was why his head was hurting so much,” Stacy said.
Water intoxication, also known as water poisoning, happens when the kidneys are unable to handle the volume of water that has been consumed.
According to Medical News Today, the kidneys can only remove 0.8 to 1 liters of water per hour and a high amount of water can upset the electrolyte balance of the body.
Symptoms include disorientation, nausea, confusion, and vomiting. In rare cases, it causes brain swelling and becomes fatal.
Fortunately, Ray has made a full recovery.
His mother shared that the 10-year-old ‘miraculously’ woke up in the hospital and started asking them what happened.
“It never would have even occurred to us that it was dangerous,” his parents said.
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