When Trista Hamsmith first heard her baby cough that October morning, she never imagined it would be the beginning of a nightmare that would take her child away.
Reese was only sixteen months old — bright, curious, full of the giggles that fill a home with life. To her mother, she was everything: the sparkle in the chaos, the laughter in the noise, the reason to keep moving forward even on the hardest days.
At first, it seemed like nothing more than a cold.
A stuffy nose, a soft wheeze, a restless night.
The pediatrician prescribed steroids for what they thought was croup — something that should have gone away in a few days.
But fate had already shifted course.
Not long after that doctor’s visit, Trista noticed something odd — the small, round battery from a remote control was missing.
Her stomach dropped.
She rushed to search the house, checking under furniture, between cushions, in every shadowed corner where a tiny hand might have reached.
Nothing.
She typed “button battery ingestion symptoms” into Google, and her heart froze.
Coughing.
Wheezing.
Chest discomfort.
Everything matched Reese.
Without wasting a second, Trista and her husband Chris raced to the emergency room.
An X-ray confirmed their worst fear — a shiny, deadly disc lodged high in Reese’s esophagus.
The surgery began immediately.
Doctors removed the battery, but the invisible damage had already begun.
Button batteries react with saliva to create a chemical burn strong enough to destroy tissue in hours.
Even after removal, the reaction continues — a silent fire inside the body.
Reese was sent home a few days later, fragile but smiling.
Her parents followed every instruction: liquid diet, rest, prayers whispered through tears.
But the healing never came.
A CT scan later revealed the horrifying truth — a fistula had formed, connecting Reese’s trachea and esophagus.
Her food and fluids were leaking into her lungs.
She couldn’t eat, couldn’t breathe properly.
The doctors placed a gastronomy tube and put her on a ventilator.
“When she came back from surgery,” Trista recalled, “she was sedated, her tiny body covered in tubes and wires. That was the last time I saw my baby awake — the last time she looked like herself.”
For six long weeks, Reese fought.
Her hospital room became a world of beeping machines, whispered prayers, and endless waiting.
Trista would sit by her bedside every night, holding her hand, singing softly — lullabies to a sleeping child who might never wake.
“I wasn’t able to hold her anymore,” Trista said. “Her airway was too fragile. Every tiny movement mattered.”
There were moments of hope — flickers of improvement, brief smiles that made the family believe a miracle might come.
But on December 17, 2020, the machines went quiet.
Reese was gone.
Trista finally got to hold her daughter again, rocking her in a hospital chair — not as a patient, but as her baby, her angel.
“It was the first time I could hold her in weeks,” she whispered. “And the last.”
On the fireplace mantel of the Hamsmith home sits a plaque that reads:
“He has a plan, and I have a purpose.”
Those words, found in Reese’s hospital room, became the heartbeat of what came next.
Trista refused to let her daughter’s death be in vain.
In the months that followed, through grief and tears, she built something extraordinary — a movement born from heartbreak.
She founded Reese’s Purpose, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the dangers of button batteries.
Through social media, public speaking, and legislative advocacy, Trista began to change lives.
She testified before the Consumer Product Safety Commission, pushing for safer designs and childproof packaging.
She helped establish National Button Battery Awareness Day on June 12 — a day to remember the children lost, and to protect the ones still here.
Her petition for federal safety standards gathered nearly 80,000 signatures.
“I don’t want any other family to live this nightmare,” she said.
“Every day we wait, another child could swallow a battery. If someone had spoken out before, maybe my Reese would still be here.”
Her words carry both grief and grace — a mother’s ache turned into mission.
Trista dreams of a future where every parent knows the danger before it happens, where every product has safety locks, and no more tiny lives are lost to something so small yet so deadly.
Experts now warn that more than 3,500 button battery ingestions occur in the U.S. each year — and that number may be far higher, as many cases go unreported.
The pandemic only made it worse: a 93% rise in emergency visits for battery-related injuries among children.
Dr. Kris Jatana, a pediatric surgeon and researcher, has seen the devastation firsthand.
“These batteries cause chemical burns we can’t undo,” he said. “The only real cure is prevention.”