A Trip to the E.R.

On the day that we unloaded the moving truck Kolby fell and cut his knee and since all of our stuff was packed we didn’t know where our band aids were. One of the neighbors who was helping us move in was kind enough to go home and get a little first aid kit for us to use band aids for Kolby’s knee. So, the other day I noticed that we still had the first aid kit, so I set it in the closet where we keep the diaper bag so that we would remember to take the first aid kit with us next time we went to church and return it to the family who lent it to us.

So, on Monday we were supposed to be at a playgroup at 10am, and I was getting all the kids ready to go when Kolby told me that Camden was eating something. Camden came in and told me that he was eating butter, but he had white mushy stuff all over his mouth and hands. I asked him where he got it, and he showed me a zip lock bag of Tylenol that he had found in the neighbor’s first aid kit in that closet – I didn’t even know there was medicine in that little kit. He said that he only ate one (although you never quite know for sure when a 2-year old says something like that), and since I didn’t know how many pills were in the bag originally, or if there were possibly other kinds of medicine in the bag, poison control wanted me to have his blood tested just to make sure he didn’t get more. They looked up the code on the pills and said it was an extra strength Tylenol, but with Camden’s weight he would have had to have eaten at least 6 pills in order to need treatment. So, I wasn’t too concerned that he was in any danger, since I didn’t suspect he had had more than one, but we decided to have him checked just to be safe. They have you wait until 4 hours after they take the pills before doing the blood draw, so we went to the playground and I fed the boys lunch before we went to the hospital and Michael got off work and met me (we decided he should take the other boys and find something to do nearby, rather than have us both wrestle all 5 kids in the E.R. for hours).

So, they checked Camden in and said that he looked normal and they weren’t concerned, but would run the tests just to make sure. The doctor also told me that they are required to have a social worker come and speak with parents whenever a child swallows any pills, but since he said that our situation wasn’t our fault and it could have happened to anyone since I didn’t even know there was medicine in the first aid kit, he got them to cancel that part so that was nice. Camden had a normal EKG and they drew his blood, and then we had to wait an hour for the results. At that point it was kind of nice because I wrapped Camden in a blanket and sang to him and he fell asleep in my arms and I ended up falling asleep too while I was holding him, so we had a nice quiet little nap together. The doctor came in when they got the results and said that Camden was fine – his Tylenol level was a 4 and it would have to be 150 in order to get treatment for it. So then we called Michael and he came back from a nearby library where the kids had been playing and picked us up and we all went home. We’ve had lots of talks with Camden since then about not eating medicine that Mommy and Daddy don’t give to you.