Let's see if I can remember some of our Poison Control calls.
Spring 2003 - 6 month Owen is crawling around grandma and grandpa's house. He had just had a poopy blowout diaper, of which some contents had made their way onto grandma's white carpet. She obligingly cleaned it up with Rug Doctor carpet cleaner with the cheeriness that only a grandma can exude while cleaning up baby poop from the floor. Alas, she left the carpet cleaner on the floor, and when I came into the room minutes later I see Owen happily sucking on the nozzle. When I smelled his breath it was tellingly aromatic of Rug Doctor so being the dutiful first time mother, I too sucked on the nozzle, just to see how hard you would have to suck on it to actually ingest some of the cleaner. The answer? Not very hard. And it tasted terrible.
"Poison Control, how can I help you?"
Apparently, ingesting Rug Doctor is not that big of a deal. Who knew??
Let's see.....I know I've called PC a few more times for Owen, but I'm drawing a blank on any of them. If any other family remembers, tell me. I should write this stuff down somewhere.
There was 2005, when I'm helping my sister in law paint my new niece's bedroom a lovely shade of light pink. We decide to take a break for lunch, and carefully shut the door to the bedroom with all the paint supplies inside. While we're eating lunch, my 4 year old nephew opens the door to the bedroom, allowing 1 year old AJ to toddle his way in there. SIL Amanda and I jump up with a start when we realize the house is quiet and one of my children is MIA. Run upstairs to find AJ happily covered in pink paint --all over his hands, dripping out of his mouth.
"Poison Control, how may I help you?"
I guess, since it was pink paint - I guess dyes had something to do with it's toxicity, we were just fine. "He might have pink poop, but other than that he'll be fine" she told me. Go figure.
Then there was just this past fall, when I took the boys to the homecoming football game at Steve's school. Lots of fun, with strobe lights and black lights and dancey cheerleader people, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm trying to wrangle Owen to at least stay within 10 yards of my eyesight, while AJ sits beside me happily waving around a glow stick. I look down and see that he has green glow juice all over his mouth and tongue - the inside of his mouth is literally glowing green, and he's saying "yucky, yucky". It WAS yucky. It smelled terrible, so with a sigh I scooped him up then went out to the car to grab my cell phone and call PC.
"Poison Control, how can I help you?"
Looks like glow stick juice is ok to ingest too. Just give him plenty of water to wash it all out. Good to know.
There are others, but let's skip on to yesterday, shall we??
After planning to make a trip to the gym, and then deciding not to, I figure that it's 11 am and time for me to shower and get myself dressed. I make the boys a snack, give them their gummi vitamins, set up a movie to enter
tain them and head for the shower. While I'm in there, Owen climbs onto the counter, retrieves the giant humungo bottle of gummi vitamins that I bought at Sam's Club, removes the "child-proof" (ha!) lid, and shares his find with his brother. The bottle was almost full (it has 220 when it's brand new).... it had 22 left when I came out of the shower. "Owen! Where are all the gummis?!"(Opening in his mouth and pointing) "in my tummy"
Now, I must confess that this is one occasion when I did feel a fair amount of panic as I dialed PC. Overdoses of vitamins are a big deal with kids...something about too much iron, organs shutting down, death...I had worst case scenarios running through my mind, but I took a deep breath as I once again, found my cell phone, looked up the number, and dialed.
"Poison Control, how may I help you?"
I explained, and we tried to calculate how many were actually left in the jar. 220 when new, they've had 2 each every day for the last month and a half, they were each eating one, they probably got about xx each, how old are they, how much do they weigh, what ingredients are in the vitamins, blah, blah, blah.
Well, thank God - Gummi Vites do not have any iron in them, and a low enough concentration of Vit A and other stuff that they'll be ok. Expect nausea or diarrhea from the ingredients that make it taste fruity and give it color. And yes, we DID experience that yesterday.
And oh yeah, they can't have any vitamins for the next 3 months. No joke.
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8 comments:
I too have Poison Control on my speed dial. First time was for Tums. Reagan must have eaten about 30 of them. They said as long as she didn't eat more than 50 she would be fine. She must have gotten into the Tums about 10 times after that first time. We finally asked the pharmacist for a child-proof lid that we could screw on the Tums bottle. She hasn't figured out how to get through that lid YET. The last time was for my prenatal vitamins. I must have spent about an hour on the phone with PC counting out the vitamins, figuring how many I had already taken, etc. She was fine. The vitamins are scary though. Just found out about the hand sanitizer too. Reagan has been found on occasion sucking it out of the purse size bottle I have attached to the diaper bag. It can actually make them drunk if they get enough. So what is it with kids? Do their taste buds not work or what?!
Twice....and both with Mattie, my "good kid." First when she was about 9 months old, she got into my purse and opened a -you guessed it- childproof bottle of tylenol. I had no idea how many were in there, or if she had had any at all, so it was Ipecac for her. (I think I heard that they don't do Ipecac anymore.) After careful inspection of her little pukes...she hadn't taken any.
Next, the time she was sick and I left the bottle of cold medicine next to her bed because...after all it had a child-proof lid...(and I was administering it in the middle of the night and maybe not at my sharpest). In the morning, she was really goofy and the bottle was empty. That one pulled daddy out of his prayer breakfast so we could fly to the ER and get screamed at by the ER doctor who thought I really deserved to be publically flogged. 5 hours later, when they were able to test the tylenol levels in her system, she was fine...she'd probably only taken about 8 tablespoons.
I don't have it on speed dial since Charleigh is really more into smearing herself with things than eating them.
My brother and I ate an entire bottle of vitamins. My mom never even blinked, let alone call poison control. Huh.
I swallowed some very acidic soap at work before...haha. long story, but apparently I didn't get enough of it to eat through my organs too much.
both times i've had to call PC was b/c my daughter got into my birth control pills and emptied/ate the entire pack. fortunately, in case you were wondering, it doesn't do much/anything.
Surprisingly enough, never one call to PC from the Porter's...knock on wood.
However, my kids have swallowed coins. I hear pennies can be bad for their digestive tract. I'll have to remember to ask about that next time we are at the doc.
I remember eating those little orange St. Joseph's aspirin when I was little. Of course, that was before child-proof caps. Who knows how many I ate, they tasted like Tang. Remember Tang?
mmmm...I remember those.
Be wary of magnets. (Charleigh swollows all kinds of things.) One magenet is okay, but they can swollow multiple magnets and they stick together through their intestines and block it that way, of all crazy things.
Can't believe the stuff you read up on when you're a mom....
ok...welcome home...time for a new postie-post!
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