The One With the Overdose

So I'm downstairs, it's a Monday afternoon, putting dishes in the dishwasher, trying to get things cleaned up before we head out to a family dinner. Parker comes jumping down the stairs, runs up to me, and says, "Don't worry Mommy . . . I took my medicine." 

Oh, that's nice. 

Well that's my first thought at least. Parker is obsessed with taking medicine, really its kind of sad.

The kid gets a bump, and it's "I need medicine!"

I'm sure this has to do with all the medicine he was constantly on for the first year of his life . . . we made him this way.

But then my thought is. . . oh shoot, I'm pretty sure Preslie has not only a bottle of tylenol in her room, but a bottle of Benadryl too. She hasn't been sleeping great, teething mixed with some sort of a stomach bug, so we were doing what we could to get even 4 hours of sleep in there for a few days. So I'm thinking, oh great, did he figure out how to get the lids off. 

"Parker, what medicine did you take?" Spoken real casually, you know, so hopefully he'll actually tell me.

And sure enough, he takes me upstairs, into Preslie's bedroom, and points at the bottle of benadryl that is sitting open, on her dresser, complete with medicine dropper inside. Now I wasn't the last person to give Preslie this medicine, so I am not entirely sure how much was in there before Parker started dosing up, but I am absolutely positive that it is missing a decent amount. 

Oh GREAT! What does an overdose of Benadryl do?

I mean, if it just knocks him out for a few hours. . . . or maybe even a few days, I am okay with that. The kid is a jabber box anyways. 

I'm just kidding.

Kind of.

So I called the doctors office and she said call Poison Control.

AWESOME!

Well, luckily the nurse there was EXTREMELY nice. But do you have any idea what it feels like to the be the parent in this conversation:

"Hi, my four year old son just swallowed an unknown amount of Benadryl."

"Well, how did he get the Benadryl?"

"It was sitting on my one year old daughter's dresser."

"How did he get it open?"

"Because the lid was already off, and there was already a dropper in it just waiting for him."

Umm, seriously? No SERIOUSLY!?!?! Talk about feeling like I should be receiving the dumb mother award. 

Although, I must say, without totally giving away who it was, that I was not the last person with the Benadryl bottle in our house. . . . . just saying.

So we go through this huge long list of things that could happen if he has overdosed, and in the meantime Parker is seriously sacking out on the couch, within like 10 minutes - really, why doesn't it work that fast during the middle of the night? I guess I need to dose them up a little more.

"How close do you live to a hospital?"

"To any hospital, or to one I will actually take a child to?"

Yeah, I will probably perform CPR on the center console of my van and drive my kids all the way to St. Luke's before I EVER take them back to West Valley that is two miles from us. 

So we end up deciding that I don't think there is anyway he ingested 12 teaspoons, which is apparently the toxic amount in a 35lb child. So we just watch him. We go to the family party and Parker is STONED out of his mind. I have never seen the kid so relaxed and go with the flow, he even went to the bathroom out the door of our car because he decided he needed to THAT bad on the way to Grandma's. 

Bottom line: Kids do crazy things when they are drugged . . .  I find it mostly amusing.

Also, lesson learned . . . no more leaving drugs without lids on them around the house.