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Houston boy swallows piece of grill brush wire left on barbecued chicken

HOUSTON — A pleasant barbecue turned into an uncomfortable experience for a Houston boy when a small piece of a metal grill brush became stuck in his throat.

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Allyson Kopel told KHOU she was grilling some chicken Wednesday for her 12-year-old son, Zach, and his friend. But something was wrong after he ate dinner.

“Whenever I swallowed, it really hurt," Zach told the television station. “I didn’t know what it was, I thought maybe it was a chicken bone. But it got in my throat, and it just stuck there.”

When the pain did not go away, Kopel took her son to an emergency room, where an X-ray revealed a tiny fiber made of steel, KHOU reported.

“It was just a freakish sort of thing, I thought, I wonder if a bristle fell off?" Kopel told the television station.

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Her theory was confirmed when doctors pulled the wire from Zach's throat and found a tiny bristle from a brush she had used to clean the barbecue grill before cooking.

"Thin as dental floss, sharp as a tack on both ends, tiny," Kopel told KHOU. "Crazy that something that small could send you to the ER for so long."