A toddler who nearly died after inhaling metallic cake decorating dust has returned home from hospital, with his parents revealing the terror of not knowing if he would survive.
14-month-old Dustin “Dusty” Wildman spent a week in an induced coma after breathing in decorative powder while crawling around his mum Katie Robinson’s home baking studio at the Gold Coast earlier this month.
The powder rapidly formed a sludge-like mass in his lungs, leaving the toddler gasping for air before he began losing consciousness in his parents’ arms.
As the situation spiralled, Dusty’s parents desperately tried to keep him awake while waiting for paramedics.
“He started to pass out, which was the hardest part,” his father Chris Wildman told 7NEWS. “That’s when we kind of freaked out a lot.”
Dusty was taken to Queensland Children’s Hospital, where doctors flushed his lungs with saline solution before placing him into an induced coma.
After the ambulance left, the shaken father waited about 20 minutes before getting behind the wheel as he tried to “regather” and calm himself enough to drive safely after watching his son struggle to breathe.
“I didn’t want to get on the road and not be able to see because I was crying,” Wildman said. “I ended up driving very slowly and safely and I thought just the last thing he needs is me in a different hospital.”
Still, Wildman was involved in a car crash on his way to the hospital. While he stopped at traffic lights in Eight Mile Plains, another driver slammed into the back of his car.
“I just heard tyres screeching behind me,” he said. “He caved the back of the car in and destroyed the front of his.”
Wildman said he barely stopped to deal with the crash, desperate to get to the hospital before Dusty was taken into surgery.
“I just ripped the bumper off and kept going,” he said. “Threw it on the side of the road. Sorry to the council that had to deal with that.”
Robinson said she spent close to an hour alone beside Dusty watching helplessly as doctors and nurses rushed to stabilise the toddler.
“It was awful just watching this whole team of people just putting tubes in,” she said. “Half the time he was crying and distressed and the other half he was just laying there.”
Robinson said hospital staff warned the moments when Dusty stopped responding were the most frightening. “I was just signing forms and having people come and talk to me. It was all a bit crazy.”
Wildman said the seriousness of the situation did not hit immediately, until he arrived at the hospital and saw a team of doctors and nurses surrounding his son.
“I rocked up thinking he was just in an ambulance,” he said. “I got there and there was, like Katie said, 10, 15 staff around him trying to help him. They were waving me over to hurry up to see him. That was scary for me.”
Robinson said doctors flushed Dusty’s lungs with saline solution in an attempt to remove as much of the metallic powder as possible before placing the toddler into an induced coma.
“They tried to pull out as much of the powder as they could,” she said. “But they just weren’t sure how much was in there.”
The full gravity of the situation only became clear days later.
“I think it took maybe two days for me to actually ask the doctors, ‘Is this something we have to worry about, whether he’s going to make it or not?’” Robinson said. “When they said, ‘We’re not really sure,’ that’s when I was like, holy crap. It was just so terrifying from that point. We just weren’t sure what was happening, and the doctors weren’t sure either, which was the hard part.”
She said medical staff were forced to monitor Dusty hour by hour, relying on “educated guesses” as they watched how his lungs and organs responded.
“They did an absolutely amazing job,” Robinson said. “We were just sitting there and hoping for the best.”
Wildman described the ordeal as “probably the hardest week we’ve ever had”, saying the uncertainty surrounding Dusty’s condition left the family emotionally shattered.
“That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with,” he said. “At the time, we’re just hearing this uncertainty, and you just didn’t really know what to think or what to do.”
Now back home, Dusty is once again playing with his toy truck, eating chocolate and keeping his exhausted parents busy.
“He was straight on the truck,” Wildman said. “It was nice to get home and just sit inside and feed him and just be normal as well.”
But the family says the recovery remains uncertain. Dusty is still using inhalers, taking antibiotics several times a week and undergoing ongoing respiratory monitoring as doctors watch for possible long-term damage to his lungs.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen when he becomes a young adult and wants to take on sports,” Wildman said. “There could be something in the future where I have to say, ‘Your lungs can’t handle it’. We’re hoping he proves us all wrong.”
The family said support from strangers and donations from the public had helped them take time away from work to focus on Dusty’s recovery.
“The amount of support we’ve received from people we don’t even know is just amazing,” Robinson said.
The metallic powder linked to Dusty’s hospitalisation has since been recalled nationwide amid fears it may contain toxic metals if inhaled or ingested.
Robinson said she decided to speak publicly so other families would check decorative baking products in their homes, warning many metallic powders and glitter sprays look almost identical to edible products.
“I’m just trying to get everyone to have a look in their cupboards,” she said. “Make sure if they do have any sort of luster dust or glitter spray, that it’s edible, that it’s 100 per cent edible. Read the ingredients even, because sometimes these products might be able to get away with saying they’re edible but have ingredients in them that might not be safe. If it’s anything that you’re concerned about, throw it straight in the bin.”
