Poison Control

Today I had to make the dreaded call to poison control. While my mom and I were otherwise engaged, Owen was off playing on his own...or so we thought. After a minute, I thought I should check on him. I walked in to find him surrounded by pills and holding a pill box. He had gotten into my mom's travel case, opened it up and dumped out her pills. We asked if head eaten any. He said yes. Part of me wasn't sure if I should believe him since he often answers the opposite of what is actually the case (or just says yes to anything we ask). However, the other part of me was concerned since I know he loves candy and tic tacs and could have easily mistaken them for something yummy. So I immediately called poison control to determine what my level of concern should be if he did ingest some.

My mom spoke with the woman on the phone and told her all the medications that has been in the box. The lady said that three of the four would need to be ingested in large quantities (as in 20-30 pills) to cause any problems. However, one of the smallest pills (a blood pressure medication) would only take one pill to cause concern. We weren't sure if he had eaten one, but we did find crushed remains of that type of pill on the floor, making us believe that he could have chewed on some and spit them out. However, since it's such a small pill and we couldn't be sure, she advised us that it would be safest to take him to the ER for monitoring. I was trying not to freak out, but of course I cried anyway.

So we quickly got ourselves ready to go and had our first outing since Elsie was born, to the ER. Owen was so cute. He was clueless to what was really going on, and made a little friend in the waiting room. He and another boy were watching the fish in a tank. The other little boy would lift him up to see better and then Owen would hug him and say, "I love you." It was so cute.

He did really well when they took his vitals. I needed to feed Elsie at that point, so they put us in an empty triage room while we waited for a room in the ER. Owen was eating some snacks and playing games with Grammy.

Once we were back there, the doctor checked on Owen.

He said if there were a problem (the medication could lower his blood pressure) that it would be evident within the first couple hours of taking it. So he wanted to monitor his blood pressure every 10 min for the next 30 min, until we were at a time he felt there was no further concern. He was really nice and told us he understood how stressful it could be, and told us a story about his brother who had gotten into a bottle of Tylenol and eaten the whole thing and had to have his stomach pumped. So sad!

Owen wasn't such a fan of the blood pressure cuff, but he was able to kick back and watch TV.

Grammy also showed him some fun games on her iPhone. After 30 min of good blood pressure readings, we were sent home.

So it was quite the adventure having to return to the hospital only a few days after leaving with my newborn baby, to make sure Owen was ok. Thank goodness he was! Grammy has since moved her bag to higher grounds where Owen cannot reach. He's far too ingenious to be trusted. And while it was a scare for all of us, and Grammy was feeling terrible that it was her medication he had gotten into, we're all ok. And that's what matters. I just hope I don't have to make that call again anytime soon...or ever again!