Facebook post on hair tourniquet brings Wichita family lots of attention

A Wichita family gained viral Internet attention when a father posted the story of his daughter’s toe injury on Facebook.

Scott Walker posted a photo of his 5-month-old daughter’s foot on Facebook with a caption warning parents about a condition called hair tourniquet.

The condition happens when a hair gets wrapped around a child’s toe, finger or penis and cuts off blood circulation. The hair can even cut through the child’s skin.

“No one thinks that hair can do damage,” Walker said.

As of Thursday evening, Walker’s original Facebook post had been shared more than 27,000 times and garnered more than 21,000 comments and 37,000 likes.

Walker said he and his wife, Jessica, were having lunch at Jessica’s mother’s house when it happened.

Walker, 32, said he and Jessica bathed Molly, their daughter, the night before, dressed her in the morning at around 9:30 a.m., and then discovered the squeezed and swollen toe at around 12:30 p.m.

“So really, it takes not a lot of time at all,” he said.

He said Molly became extremely agitated five to 10 minutes before they discovered the hair. He said Jessica and Jessica’s mother tried to calm Molly, but because she had been fed and her diaper was changed they couldn’t figure out why she was upset.

That’s when they took off Molly’s socks to try to cool her off. He said her right sock, the one covering her injured foot, was soaked with sweat. That’s when they saw her swollen toe.

“I had never heard of it before, or seen, or even imagined it,” he said. “And when we pulled the sock off and saw what was going on, I had no idea what I was even looking at.”

Within minutes, he said, Jessica had fetched a magnifying glass and tweezers to remove the hair. Molly bled slightly from the hair, but Walker said it wasn’t too deep.

Walker said Jessica is a nurse for Kansas Surgery and Recovery Center and previously worked in an immediate care clinic and had known about the condition.

“When we saw it, it was stressful because I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “That’s a terrible feeling as a parent.”

He said Molly calmed down almost immediately after, although her foot stayed swollen for some time. He said her toe has a circular indentation where the hair was caught.

Walker said they took Molly to an urgent care clinic after the incident, but the doctor didn’t find any problems with her foot.

How it happens

Amy Seery, a pediatrician for the University of Kansas School of Medicine, who works at Via Christi St. Francis, wrote a chapter about hair tourniquet for a clinical consultation book.

She said it’s most common with penises, toes and fingers – in that order.

She said mothers tend to shed a significant amount of hair after giving birth, which increases the opportunity for hair to get stuck in the socks, clothes or mittens of newborns and infants.

When children flex and curl their toes and fingers, she said, they can unintentionally wrap the hair around themselves.

“There’s all kinds of ways for stuff to get caught,” Seery said.

Nonetheless, she said, it’s rare. She said doctors will likely see just one or two cases throughout their career.

She said many parents often find a hair coiled around their child’s fingers or toes, but can catch it early enough to pull off the hair before it requires medical attention.

“Once it’s wrapped around and tightened, we call it a cheese wire effect,” she said. “When it slices through the cheese, it splits for a second and then re-adheres.”

She said doctors have to cut deep into a child’s skin to make sure all hair is removed to prevent it from reaching the bone.

She said she recommends parents wash their child’s socks inside out to catch any hairs that could get stuck.

And if a child is inconsolable, she said, it’s good to undress them right away to check for injuries.

“There’s all kinds of little things that could be going on that your child can’t tell you,” she said. “You’ve got to take the diaper off.”

She said it’s important to get appendages checked immediately.

“I try to tell parents to trust their mom and dad instincts,” Seery said.

“It’s better to get it checked out sooner, rather than later.”

This story was originally published February 4, 2016 at 6:46 PM with the headline "Facebook post on hair tourniquet brings Wichita family lots of attention."