March 8, 2002 So yesterday, he's got his pills in a purple tupperware dish. I am getting water at the sink next to him and I tell him,"Be sure you get all those back in the bottle." He copped an attitude with me, "I KNOW, Mom." He took on that tone of voice that says,"You're treating me like a big freakin' baby and I may be only 8 and a half, but I'm just shy of driving your car off to Makeout Point and feeling up a girl." We left and picked up Genny at daycare. Last night, as I sat upstairs trying to finish my last few pages on a document I've been pruning, I listened to Mike and Russell yelling at Genny. Genny, being a near two-year old, has officially entered toddlerhood, complete with the mastery of the word, "MINE!" and the fact that she is into every freaking thing imaginable. Her recent foray under our bureau, as an example. I realize it was nearing 8PM, well near the kids' bedtime, and went down to ask Mike to please bathe Genny. When I went downstairs, Mike was holding a piece of tupperware with Genny standing in front of him and looked at Russell in horror and said,"Holy shit, Russell, this is RITALIN!" He starts sticking his fingers in Genny's mouth to swab it out. I screamed something incoherent and frantic at Russell and headed for the phone book emergency pages to find the poison control number. Russell started to scream and yell at me and I gave him a look of death and hissed,"GO TO YOUR ROOM, NOW!" I frantically called the poison control number. We called Russell back down and asked him to remember how many pills he'd left in the damned dish. Of course, he was freaking out and started by saying 5-6. My jaw must have dropped as I computed all that ritalin in a baby half his size. He only takes 1 pill. There were only two pills left in the dish. He stammered and said,"Maybe only 3 or 4. I don't know." I yelled,"TRY TO REMEMBER!" He started bawling as loud as possible. I couldn't hear the poison control guy, and bellowed,"GO TO YOUR ROOM, NOW!" Meanwhile, Mike has the baby over the sink and is trying to rinse her mouth out and get any of the crap off her face. My heart was in my throat, frantically listening to the Poison Control Guy tell me to take her to the nearest emergency room and that he'd call ahead. I called the neighbors to watch Russell, left my cell phone number, grabbed the bottle of ritalin, while Mike got her in the car. While he started the car, I frantically scraped all the ice and snow off the car from the "worst storm of the season." Mike got in back with her, I put it in 4WD and we made our way to the hospital at what seemed like a snail's pace across roads that amounted to little more than textured sheets of ice. I went the back way up the ambulance route and dropped him and her at the ambulance entrance to the emergency room. I parked. When I went inside to find him, he was in the fucking waiting room. At which point, I started raising my voice to the woman who told me we should wait and be seated,"My daughter has taken an unknown quantity of ritalin. She is NOT going to be in the waiting room. You are going to look at her RIGHT NOW!" At which point, the triage nurse came in and told me something patronizing, like,"Please calm down." I said,"I will not calm down. The last time I came here you didn't see me, even though I couldn't breathe. I will NOT wait in the waiting room when my daughter has taken a poison. Poison Control has already called you and warned you we were coming. You need to help her NOW." The triage nurse emptied her office of the people who were in it and took Genny in and weighed her, asked me how much she took, etc. We called the pharmacy so we could figure out exactly how much she'd taken and finally figured out 2.5 pills, or 25 mg of ritalin. Russell takes only 10 at a time and he weighs a little more than twice what Genny does. I felt my heart sink. I realized looking at her Purple Thursday Tigger socks, that we hurried out so fast, she had no shoes. I wondered if they thought we were bad parents because not only had she gotten into the ritalin, but we brought her to the emergency room, a shoeless ragamuffin, and then had the balls to yell at them. They took her vitals and nurses kept checking her until the doctor saw her. He told us they'd consult with Poison Control, but that we could plan on her staying a long time, if not all night. I called my neighbor, worked out a plan with her and Mike, went home and grabbed clothing changes for both Genny and me, and my medicines, etc. Mike and I figured of the two of us, I'd do better cuddling her all night in a twin size hospital bed. When I came back, my stomach twisted because I heard her screaming all the way down the hall. When I poked around the curtain, she was blotched in black stuff and lying spread eagled on the bed with Mike, a paramedic, and a nurse holding her down and drawing blood. I thought,"They gave her the charcoal." The doctor had said they were going to do that, and I remembered something about charcoal making people nauseous briefly and let the thought go flitting out of my head as I stroked her face and kissed her, while she screamed. I sent Mike home to Russell, and set about cleaning her face and changing her clothes. Then she started getting really wiggly. She had to have all 3 of her dollies, her book, the e-room books, and her blanket AT THE SAME TIME RIGHT NOW,DAMMIT. She couldn't sit down. She got up and down out of the bed. I started giving her rides up and down the hall in a wheelchair. Of course, she had to be accompanied by all her dolls and her blanket and her bottle of water. She also jumped in and out of the chair periodically to turn and look at her dolls and to dance in the hallway. She curved her little arm around her bottle of water. She patted her dolls. She kept saying,"My baby! My baby!" I kept walking because it gave me a way to keep the rising panic at bay. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, the admissions clerk came down and we went to the pediatric ward. Genny continued to be wiggly and obsessive about her stuff. We curled up in bed together. The nurses needed to hook her up to an EKG and an oxygen monitor, but she was so wiggly and traumatized from the charcoal and the blood draw, I knew she'd rip the leads off. I asked the nurses to let me try to get her to sleep. She rubbed her eyes and constantly shifted position for 2 hours. At midnight, she kissed me and then sat up suddenly and I watched black vomit pour out of her mouth rather soundlessly. I pushed the nurse button frantically, the warm black ooze soaking my shoulder. Then, I hopped off the bed, trying to save my pants and tossing her dolls into a chair, so she'd have them later and the nurse walked in. I tore off my shirt and we stripped her down and I took her to the bathroom with one washcloth, while the nurses stripped and cleaned the bed. The nurses brought me more washcloths and towels and I got her cleaned. They offered to put her in a crib. I agreed. She was so wiggly, I didn't think she'd sleep comfortably with me. By this time, she was so exhausted, when they put the leads on her under her hospital gown, she didn't protest. When they put the pulse and oxygen lead on her toe, she weakly cried,"Owie, owie." It wasn't hurting her physically, but I could totally relate to her pain. We put her socks on her feet to make it hard for her to get to the pulse-ox. The nurse told me,"Oh, we can just take that off." I quietly watched my exhausted child and said,"Just give me a minute." The nurse started to protest and I simply repeated,"Give me a minute." I stood stroking her hair as she dozed off, wires coming off her like bionic implants from some sci-fi film anti-hero. After she'd dropped off, I sat in a chair next to her where she could see me and she blinked her eyes open and then closed them over and over for about half an hour. And fell into a deep sleep. Over the night, she cried in her sleep and I shushed her back to sleep and told her I loved her, and she'd fall back. I checked her monitors and watched as her numbers slowly decreased over the night -- her pulse had slowed from 130 to 93 by morning. Today, she's home and tearing up the back yard in her Little Tykes Coupe. Mike and I are nothing but exhausted. Russell's grounded and forbidden from getting his medication without an adult. I keep remembering what the housekeeper in the emergency room said as I wheeled her up and down the corridors,"My God, she's so beautiful!" Yes, she is.
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