After the deadly social media craze put her kid only days away from death, a distraught British mother is warning other parents about the perils of “chroming.” While nursing her two-year-old infant in August of last year, Nichola King heard her preteen son Cesar pass out in the kitchen of their home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. There was a loud thump from the disturbance, and the 36-year-old hurried to the room to find her 12-year-old on the floor having a seizure.
“I heard like a moaning sound from downstairs and thought Cesar had broken a bone or something,” King later told the press. “I started going downstairs and saw Cesar lying on the floor, and his eyes were rolling back into his head.” She was so terrified that she urged her other kids to call for help and to call for an ambulance.
“I thought he’d fallen over and hit his head. I had no idea what had happened,” King continued. “He went blue and stopped breathing. I thought he’d died. I was in complete shock.” “I’d watched my son die and watched the light go out of his eyes.”
While his older brother Kaidan called the police, the mother of four even tried CPR on Cesar. After that, the boy was taken to Doncaster Royal Infirmary, where medical professionals informed King that he had experienced a heart attack.
Cesar continued to have seizures and suffered several more heart attacks while under their care. For two days, the child was kept in a medically induced coma as a result of this. Police searched the family’s house during this period and discovered a bottle of Aldi Lacura antiperspirant at the spot where Cesar’s mother had discovered him.
Authorities later determined that the boy had been participating in the risky social media trend of “chroming” just minutes before he hit the ground, following the discovery of similar paraphernalia. “I’d not heard of [chroming] before this,” King confessed after being dealt the heartbreaking news. “An older boy had showed him how to do it. When police told me what he’d inhaled, I thought he was going to die. I knew it said on the back of cans ‘solvent abuse kills instantly’.”
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To get a quick “high,” “chroming” involves participants breathing harmful substances, including paint, solvent, aerosol cans, cleaning supplies, or gasoline. Side effects of the unlawful habit, which is sadly well-documented on video-sharing apps, include nausea, disorientation, hallucinations, slurred speech, and dizziness. However, ‘chroming’ can cause asphyxia or a heart attack in the most deadly circumstances.
Fortunately for Cesar, the child recovered completely after being sent to Sheffield Children’s Hospital. By the eighth day of his treatment, he was able to move and speak once more and had started breathing on his own. King acknowledged, “I was over the moon,” after being freed last year. When he was released, he was practically back to his usual self—eating, drinking, and laughing. He simply feels worn out.
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She went on to note: “If I hadn’t heard something that night, I’d have come downstairs to a dead body the next morning. I’ve spoken to Cesar and asked him to never do anything like this again. “I’ve thrown out everything in the house that sprays.”
To spare other mothers and fathers the agony of nearly losing a child, King is, of course, exploiting her tragic experience to raise awareness about “chroming.” “I’d say to the kids, it’s not worth it,” she explained. “It might feel good but it definitely doesn’t when you’re in the hospital trying to breathe for yourself and the pain you cause to your parents.
“And I want to stress the importance of parents being first-aid trained. I think anyone with kids should attend a course as it could be the difference between life and death.”
