I wanted to share a note written by my husband last week, we had such a scare that we want to get the word out to as many people as possible. I still cry when I think about what happened, and I have anxiety the last 2 -3 times I've dropped him off at pre-school. I hope you all learn from our experience and please share the message! I love my family and I'm so grateful for them!
I forgot to secure the cap to a bottle of cough syrup; Ethan got up this morning and sometime after breakfast drank the entire bottle. We didn't notice anything until he started saying "I'm crazy mommy...I'm crazy." He wouldn't stop saying it...We noticed a rash, and quickly after that it hit him like a ton of bricks. He couldn't hold his head up, it kept rolling from side to side...his eyes were out of focus and rolling around in his head. At first we thought it was a concussion, he had taken a pretty good spill and had a bump on his head...we just didn't know, so we called an ambulance which took Jen and E to the hospital. Jen told me afterward that E was completely unresponsive, wouldn't talk, wouldn't react to anything on the way to the hospital.
After a CT scan, a chest x-ray, and a spinal tap...the ER doctor was able to rule just about everything out except an allergic reaction, OR if he got into something. I drove home to comb through the house to see if I could find something; Jen asked E while I was en route, he told her that he had drank a bottle of orange medicine. When I got home I found the empty bottle, right were I had left it the night before.
My little man could've died today, the ER doctor admitted after he stabilized how worried she had been Thankfully he is doing much better, as of a few hours ago he was tearing through a bag of potato chips and wanting to drink dad's Coke. I couldn't stop staring at him, feeling like I had failed in the most basic way a dad could fail...to protect my family. E turned and looked at me, I told him I was sorry...he said, "that's okay daddy." I will never forgot today, or that moment.
The pediatrician came in and tried to make us feel better, she told us how often this kind of thing happens...parents that are shocked to find out that one of their kids got into a medicine cabinet. She asked us to remind our friends, ALL OF OUR friends how important locking up all medicine is. Don't count on child proof caps, don't be surprised that "baby-proof" cabinet locks aren't so baby-proof...I wouldn't want any of you to go through what my family went through today.
