My wife takes a lot of drugs. She has had a chonic back problem for many years and we are planning on having the nerves burned out of her facet joints this week. She takes muscle relaxers, pain relievers, nerve pain blockers, and sleep medicine in order to relive some of the pain. Because of this we have a lot of drugs around the house, but we also have a 2 year old. The little girl has been taught to never eat anything she picks up off the floor (an 8 month old in our church died from eating a screw earlier this year so that added to the paranoia for us).
On Thursday night the little cutie was staying with my parents and sister when she brought an empty pill holder to my sister. My sister remembered seeing it on the counter with 2 pills inside, so the first assumption was that they had been ingested.
After breaking a few traffic laws my wife and I arrived to try to identify what pills they may have been and then we rushed immediately to the local hospital. Because the possible ingested pills cause heart arrhythmia she had an EKG soon after arrival and another one before we left 6 hours later.
It was no fun sitting in an emergency room under observation until late into the night, but a little discomfort is always a miniscule price to pay for the health of a child, especially your own.
Of course, there were lessons:
- No pill holder is really child proof so keep them out of reach
- Out of reach from a 2 year old? Yeah, that isn’t easy.
- Respond quickly. Call Poison Control (1-800-222-1222 in the USA)
- Not kidding, an hour is too long.
- Make sure you can reach someone to help out while you are at the hospital. You won’t want to leave at any time. My mom was able to come in later and bring food and the diaper bag which was left behind during our hurry.
- When you leave your diaper bag behind it is amazing that a diaper 2 sizes too small still fits when that is all they have on hand.
- Emergency room people can be very nice. Especially when you have a sweet little toddler with you.
By the way, have you added the poinson control number to the other emergency numbers in your cell phone yet? You did have the other important emergency numbers in your cell phone already, didn’t you?
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