In case any of you need to know for future reference, this is the Utah # for poison control. For various reasons, in the past 3 years I have had to make 3 calls to poison control, the most recent call was this morning. I thought that I would give a few helpful hints when calling poison control before I tell the story of this morning...
- Know the number- I am so thankful for the community calendars that are sent out every year. The number is listed on the top of the calendar! Thanks!
- Have the bottle(s) of the substance that was swallowed with you. If possible, know approximately how many pills or how much liquid was swallowed.
- Be sure the child(ren) you are calling about is near you, you know their age(s), weight and if any symptoms are showing.
- Be aware that the child that was playing with the harmful substance is not always the one that ingested said harmful substance. It is a good idea to check on all of your kids.
- Have a pen and paper handy for any instructions given.
Okay, so now I want to say all of the things that I have learned about my kids today...
- Child-proof bottle caps are not not child-proof. The manufacturers of these did not take into account children like Britin or Jacob were alive and thriving in the world.
- Just because I think they are asleep does not mean they really are.
- If Jacob and Britin have gotten into anything and have left it somewhere Malia is bound to find it and get into whatever she can.
- Jacob and Britin should be hired by the Mission Impossible people to show them proper stealth techniques. They have the ability to get in and out of a room, carrying items without being detected by light-sleeping parents.
- Kylie likes to be involved, the center of attention, when I need to be on the phone finding out how to care for my child(ren) that have swallowed an unknown amount of pills.
- When I say to sit still, I am really telling my kids, in child language, to run and play and make me absolutely insane.
So, now that you all are really wondering, here is what happened this morning. Well, I am going to need to do a Wayne's World squiggly, fuzzy screen, because it actually all started last night. I have been extra tired the past 5 days, taking care of my invalid husband who is still recovering from surgery. At about midnight I finally succumbed to sleep, and not a restful one at that. I am on the couch so Dalen can do his thing if he wants or if he is unable to sleep because he has been sleeping all day. Anyway, so, apparently there is an inner-alarm that goes off in Jacob's and Britin's minds that tell them when it is okay to come sneak upstairs and get into stuff. Sometime between falling asleep and waking up this morning the 2 mischief makers came upstairs, opened the master bedroom door, snuck over to the bedside table that had Dalen's post-surgery medication, grabbed a bottle of meds without waking up Dalen. Next, they brought the bottle into the front room, sat on the couch, next to where I was asleep, and opened the bottle of phenergen (an anti-nausea medication). For some reason I didn't wake up when any of this was going on. Jacob decided not to take any of the medication, so Britin was the guinea pig. She is like "Mikey" from the old Life cereal commercials. She'll try anything. She didn't like it so much because after letting a little bit dissolve in her mouth she spit it out. Then they went into the kitchen, leaving the pills behind, and got into food. And, I didn't hear a thing!
Skip ahead to this morning. Kylie got Malia out of bed when Malia woke up and brought her into the front room. I got up off the couch and get Malia some breakfast, still half asleep. After doing that as quickly as possible and a fast pit stop in the bathroom I headed back to the couch to catch a few zzz's before I absolutely had to get up and get going. Not long after that Kylie woke me up to ask me what Malia was playing with. I looked on the ground next to me and there was Malia, on the ground with Dalen's pills. With eyes mostly shut I hadn't seen the pills all over the couch or ground when I got up to feed Malia. So, I freaked... I ran into the bedroom, trying to count the pills I found on the ground and frantically yelled at Dalen, "how many phenergen pills have you taken?" He said one. I counted 17... where on the bottle did it say how many are supposed to be in there. My hands were shaking so bad I couldn't hold the bottle still long enough to read the label. Finally, there is was, on the bottom- "ct. 20. " I am missing 2... she swallowed 2. I yelled to Kylie to stop trailing me and go back into the front room and sweep the floor again, looking for 2 more pills. I grabbed Malia, gagged her while trying to pull her tongue out to see if there was white pill residue on her tongue. Smelled her breath, nothing. I grabbed the phone anyway- where is the number to poison control. Thanks to the helpful people who make the community calendar, as I mentioned before, the number is listed on the top. I talked to a very nice man named Ed who was patient and tried to keep me calm. He took all necessary information, name of the child, age, weight, item swallowed, how many, dosage of the pills, etc. Then, Dalen came in, he said the pills were on the bedside table when he went to sleep last night. How did Malia get in there? Uh oh, it wasn't just Malia. Where are my mischief makers???? I told Dalen to go check on Jacob and Britin. He said they were asleep downstairs. I told Ed that my 3 year old might have swallowed one or both of the pills. He was finally able to tell me that they didn't take a lethal dosage, and it shouldn't be toxic. The side effects of the pills are extreme sleepiness. But, for some, if taken in too high of a dose, it can cause agitation and hallucinations, rash and redness of skin and eyes. Ed told me to watch for any symptoms and he would call me back in an hour to check on the kids. I thanked him and hung up.
Still not calmed down, I ran downstairs to wake up Jacob and Britin. After much prodding, I found out what really happened. Jacob told me about the midnight excitement that I slept through. He also told me about the couch. I ran upstairs, threw off the couch cushions, and there they were, the 2 missing pills. One was completely intact, the other looked like it had been sucked on a little and spit out, which is exactly what happened. I called Ed back at poison control and told him all pills had been accounted for, the 3 year old was the one that sucked on one pill, she is okay and the 18 month old is doing just fine. WHY, WHY, WHY???? If anyone can answer that question I would greatly appreciate it. Why do they have a radar to get into the exact thing that they shouldn't? Why are they so determined to open up a bottle that they figure out how to open a "child-proof" bottle? Why medicine? Why didn't I wake up? Why didn't Dalen wake up? Why do they have to scare me to death? They may not have caused all of my gray hair, but they have caused the majority of it.
