A quick high that proved fatal The chroming warning all families need to hear
Imagine a phone call around 10pm on a Friday night asking you to come pick up your 13-year-old daughter from a sleepover because something is wrong.
They think maybe it’s a panic attack.
The drive takes around 20 minutes and when you arrive, you see your baby girl on the ground being worked on by paramedics.
She’s gone into cardiac arrest.
You then hear the words: “She’s been chroming.”
Esra Haynes had been named co-captain of her under-14s AFL team earlier that day and that evening was like so many others, a sleepover with her footy friends.
“(It was) just a regular routine of going to hang out with her mates,” her mum Andrea said.
A decision was made to chrome – a dangerous craze becoming increasingly popular with teenagers where they inhale the chemicals from an aerosol deodorant.
It gives them a quick high – a quick high that proved fatal for young Esra.
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After eight days on life support, her beautiful parents Paul and Andrea, along with her older siblings, Imogen, Seth and Charlie, were forced to make the difficult decision to turn off her life support.
Esra had sustained significant brain damage and would not recover.
“They’re asking us to bring our family, our friends, to say goodbye to our 13-year-old daughter,” Paul said.
“It was a very, very, very difficult thing to do for such a young soul.”
How many lives were ruined in that one moment?
Esra is gone; she’ll never walk in the front door again, give her dad a kiss on the cheek, or ask her mum for a lift to footy training.
Her sister and brothers are left wandering the house, unable to bear the silence and the void her death has left.
And what about the friends with her that night?
How many times over the coming years will they ask themselves, “Why Esra? Why wasn’t it me?”
Those friends spend a lot of time in Esra’s room, just lying on her bed, wanting to feel close to her.
The story of Anna Wood will never leave my mind.
She was a teenager who died after consuming an ecstasy tablet.
Her story became a chilling reminder to kids all around the country that pills kill.
Now decades later, Esra also serves as a stark reminder for a less known danger – chroming.
“Kids don’t look beyond the next day. They really don’t. Especially not knowing how it can affect them,” Paul said.
“The ripple effect is that this is absolutely devastating, we’ve got no child to bring home,” Andrea said.
Every teenager thinks they’re invincible. We all did right?
It’s why Esra’s family is fighting so hard to show other kids the devastation chroming can cause.
They hoped with every fibre of their being their baby girl would pull through.
“Esra would’ve never have done this if she’d had known the consequences. That it could take your life,” Paul said.
During those final days, another family approached Andrea and Paul.
Their daughter was also in ICU from chroming.
Unlike Esra, she survived.
It’s clear too many kids are trying this craze.
Esra’s family is now calling for change.
They believe she first saw chroming on social media and they want restrictions to ban this sort of content.
They also want deodorant formulas to be made safer and for CPR to be taught in all schools.
Her family won’t rest until their message is out there.
They don’t want anyone else to experience their heartbreak.
