You Drank What?!

Two days ago I got up to go feed Lucas as he woke up for the day. Zander wasn't awake yet, and Stephen was getting ready to go to work. I was almost done with Lucas as Stephen left and Zander woke up and came upstairs. He normally always comes into the bedroom to say hello every morning before getting into anything, but this morning was different. Lucas has been teething, so I've been giving him Tylenol to help with the pain. I left the bottle and syringe on the kitchen counter, and Zander thought it'd be a good idea to, somehow, open the childproof lid and drink the bottle of Tylenol.

Zander has always liked taking medicine, and often gets upset when Lucas gets some but he doesn't. I came out to the kitchen to see what Zander was up to, and found 3/4 of my almost full bottle of Tylenol empty. First of all, I couldn't believe he got past the childproofing (but not really because it's Zander), and second, I kinda froze because I didn't know what to do. I knew this was bad, and that I'd probably have to take him to the ER, so I called Stephen first and told him what happened, then I called the urgent care because I didn't want to take him to the ER if it wasn't absolutely necessary. They weren't open yet, so I called the pediatrician office knowing it wasn't open either, but thought I'd check anyway. Then I called Mom, and Dad answered the phone and told me to call Uncle Garth who lives in Arizona. He's a physicians assistant. So I call him, and he told me because it was infants Tylenol Zander would probably be fine, but to check in with my pediatrician just the be safe. I brushed Zander's teeth and tried to gag him with the toothbrush to make him throw up, but that proved very difficult and a huge failure.

Luckily I already had an appointment scheduled that morning for Lucas, but I called the office again to talk to the doctor on-call just to be sure I could wait a few hours before Zander got looked at. I was told the doctor would be paged and call me in a few minutes. So I waited..... an hour later no phone call so I just drove to the office that was now open by this time, and got Lucas checked in and I asked if my doctor could see Zander. This was 2 1/2 hours after Zander overdosed. The first thing the nurse asked me was if I called poison control. I admitted that I didn't, but that I called the office for the doctor on-call and no one got in contact with me.

In short, they ended up sending us to the hospital anyway because it was too late to pump his stomach or give Zander activated charcoal to make him throw up, so we had get his blood drawn to see the levels of acetaminophen that was in his system to make sure it didn't damage his liver. We went home and Zander took a good, long nap. I got the test results back later that afternoon and his levels were at 20 something and they only worry if they exceed 50 so Zander was going to be OK.

I should have called poison control first thing, then just taken him to the ER in retrospect. This would have saved me a lot of time and worry. So I know what to do next time Zander decides to do something stupid, haha.