Yesterday dawned happily enough. The boys had been invited to the circus with Nana and Pa and I was looking forward to finally being able to do the fluids and rest– sit on the couch and read the NYT– that my poor crud-filled lungs sorely needed. During the getting-ready chaos– fighting over a transformer, several feet needing socks and shoes, teeth brushing and puffs and so on– I heard a little voice from the bedroom. It was Isaac. He said, "Mom, he drank the medicine."
I came in and found Isaac standing there with an empty bottle of Children's Benadryl. He said, "I found him like this," and demonstrated, head tipped all the way back polishing off the bottle. I stared at it in disbelief. yes– it was completely empty. I asked Elias, "Did you drink this?" and he replied, cheerfully, "Yes! I drink it all up!"
Holy shit.
So I began scrambling around to find the number to poison control, and then began to try to remember, precisely how much was in the bottle. It was getting low, I think. But how low? I got through to poison control and told them that I estimated it was three tablespoons, but this was sort of a wild guess. The lady put me on hold. She came back and said, "If it's three tablespoons, you're probably all right to watch him at home. If it's more than that, you need to take him in." I decided to actually measure out three tablespoons of water to see if that looked about right. And it did– about. She said that Elias would get drowsy, but if he really went to sleep we had to take him in. Okay…
So fifteen minutes later he was on the bed, very drowsy. His eyes looked weird. Indeed, we were in a bright, sunny room and yet his pupils were big black saucers. Then his eyes started rolling up into his head and he was out. I called poison control back. The lady had an increased level of stress in her voice and said that I had to get him to the ER immediately. She asked whether I had a another adult to ride in the car with me. And Ben was there, but so was Isaac. We hastily decided that the best idea would be to have Ben go forth with the plan, take Isaac to Canton to hand him off to Nana and Pa, and then meet me at the hospital. This way, Isaac would be occupied all afternoon and Ben and I could focus.
I began throwing things in a bag, thinking I would need things, and I would be there for hours, but I was also incredibly distressed and worried and not wanting to waste time. Isaac was muddying the waters by following me around and complaining that Elias had broken his transformer! You will congratulate me that I didn't slap him, nor shake him, nor tell him to shut the hell up. But I did say rather firmly, "I don't care! Your brother is very sick!" Later Ben said that it was probably just as well that Isaac was clueless as to the seriousness of the situation.
I would say the worst part was the interlude between getting off the phone with the anxious-seeming poison control person, and actually getting physically into the emergency room and into the hands of doctors. Our geography is bad, and it's a good 20 minutes into downtown Akron, with lots of lanes and traffic and whatnot to navigate, to get into Akron Children's Hospital. Elias in the rearview mirror possibly slipping into a coma. I've gotten better at it with practice, but still I tell you I am COUNTING THE MINUTES until the new ER will be finished, only five minutes away from us at the Wellness Center where I work out all the time. That will be a much less intense drive. Opening spring 2009! Can't wait!
Anyway, poison control had called ahead and we got into the examining room immediately. What they did there was hook up a lot of sensors to his little chest– heart rate, respiration, blood oxygen, blood pressure, and so forth. The doctor took a moment to calculate the dose, scribbling on the paper of the examining bed. He determined that our best guess is that Elias had a dose equal to nine times the normal dose. He then said that the plan was just to watch and wait. (Apparently they don't pump stomachs anymore– "Those days are gone," the doctor said. "It absorbs immediately anyway.") It would be three hours until it was well past the peak level in his system. At that point, we would know he was okay. He mentioned that they might have to place an IV if certain things went wrong. He told me to call the nurse if he started to shake. And then he basically said, "See you in three hours," and walked out.
So. There I was, holding the soundly sedated Elias. I could see on the screen that he was not going into a coma and was basically fine, although drugged out of his gourd. The left me free to consider my situation… I still had my coat on. I was holding a 28-pound child with one arm, in a stiff little chair that had no arm rest. I set Elias down on the little bed and took off my coat, hoping he would sleep there. But no, he actually woke up enough to cry and struggled, getting his little wires all tangled and making his monitors go heywire. The nurse came in to fix the wires and I begged her for a chair with arms. This was a slight improvement, seeing as it seemed I would be holding him the whole time. I looked through the diaper bag and took inventory. What I had: snacks. What I lacked: water. What I had: some parts of the paper. What I lacked: reading glasses.
Yes. Just terrific! The hours truly crept by. After an eon or two, Ben showed up. I was able to make the hand off, stretch, go to the rest room, stand up and move around a little. Eventually the doctor came back, flipped on all the lights and said, "We're now going to aggressively wake him up." Elias sort of came round and they gave him a popsickle, which perked him up a great deal. Basically, it was all over and were were free to go. The doctor said, "At least it wasn't Tylenol. If he was going to drink something, Benadryl was one of the better things." Apparently Tylenol causes liver damage. "If it had been Tylenol we'd likely be keeping him here on an IV for three days."
Later when we all went home, I went back up to the scene of the crime. Apparently Elias had climbed the bookshelf like a ladder, taken down the Benadryl, gotten off the childproof cap and guzzled it. When I asked him about it last night, he explained, "I hide and I drink it." He hid! He knew he was doing something wrong and had closed the bedroom door to get away with it. But the worst part was this: on a shelf about the height of my thigh, sitting right there, with the cap off (!!) I found a bottle Tylenol. At the moment, I thought, "holy crap– how did I leave this here??" And put it in what I hope is a safe location. Only later, when I was going to sleep, did the cogs fall into place. Of course. … I DIDN'T leave it like that. No matter how tired I was, or sick, I would never have left an open bottle of Tylenol on a thigh-high shelf.
Oh, I get it. He had climbed up, and gotten BOTH bottles down, gotten BOTH caps off, and was planning to guzzle them both. It was just blind luck that he chose to guzzle the Benadryl first, and that Isaac interrupted him before he got any farther.
Thus I close out the whole episode with a mix of retroactive dread and profound gratitude. We lucked out. It could have been much worse.