A 2-year-old boy from Thomasville, Georgia, was playing outside with his brothers when his face suddenly began to swell, triggering a frantic race to the emergency room.

After unknowingly stepping into a newly formed fire ants mound, his parents, Lexi and Cody Johnson, 30 and 36, pulled him to safety to get the ants off their son, Rolin, as quickly as possible.

"I rushed him to the bathroom tub and immediately ran cold water on him," Lexi told Newsweek. "I didn’t really have time to think. It all happened so quickly."

Fire ants are aggressive stinging insects commonly found across the southern United States, and in rare cases their venom can trigger a severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis.

Lexi called Rolin's pediatrician for advice while Cody stayed with their son in the bathroom.

The doctor advised her to watch for facial swelling, but before she had even finished the call, Rolin's condition had changed dramatically.

"When I hung up the phone and walked into the bathroom, his face was swollen with a bunch of bumps," Lexi said. "I grabbed him out of the bath while my oldest son went to grab him new clothes so we could get him to the ER. I didn’t really have time to even dry him off."

With Lexi's sister-in-law looking after family's other children—Colton, Walker and Charley—they rushed to hospital.

In the car, Rolin stopped crying and started to fall asleep in the car. Lexi became increasingly concerned.

"I kept talking to him, saying, 'Rolin, it’s going to be okay. Stay with me,' and I kept talking to him and making sure he could still answer," she said.

Lexi recalled pulling up to the emergency room and leaving her car behind as she rushed Rolin inside.

When she told a nearby stranger that her son was having an allergic reaction, he offered to keep an eye on the vehicle, but her focus was entirely on getting her son medical attention as quickly as possible.

Once inside the emergency department, medical staff quickly recognized the gravity of the situation.

"The lady was just doing the normal admin stuff," Lexi said. "But once she saw his face, she called for immediate care."

Rolin was given emergency treatment, including two doses of epinephrine, steroids and antihistamines.

Doctors and nurses also inserted an IV line while Lexi comforted her son.

"All I could do was comfort him and tell him everything would be okay," she said.

The experience came as a shock to the family because Rolin had previously been bitten by ants without suffering an allergic reaction.

"I have definitely become a lot more cautious since we live in the South, and ants are everywhere," Lexi said.

Lexi shared the frightening incident in a reel on Instagram (@lexi17j). The clip has since gone viral, amassing nearly 7 million views.

While some social media users suggested the family should have been watching more closely for fire ant mounds in the comments, Lexi said the reality is not always so simple.

"Sometimes you can't see them," she said, noting that the family already uses regular pest-control treatments.

Fortunately, Rolin has made a full recovery.

"He is back to his normal silly, stubborn self!" Lexi said. "And still wants to play outside like a normal little boy."

She urged other parents to trust their judgment if they sense something is wrong,

"If we didn’t live only five minutes from the hospital, I don’t know how that day could have ended," she said.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Kara Dolman and Emma Lee-Sang