“it will hurt them”

We had to rush Taryn to the ER this morning on a moment’s notice. She got ahold of some of the gel pesticide that Terminex put onto the inside of our cabinets. Our kitchen is childproofed, but Jason was standing at the counter putting dishes away and one of the drawers was open. Taryn put her hand up on the side of the drawer, grabbed a small amount of the gel and put it in her mouth. We were both right there, and immediately tried to get it out of her mouth, but it was too late, she had already swallowed it. She’s our child who chews on everything and any little thing she finds goes straight into her mouth. She’ll chew on fuzz, literally, anything she finds, it makes me crazy. I started wiping out her mouth and then rinsed it with water. We frantically tried to find our Terminex paperwork so we could call Poison Control, no luck. Jason was looking everywhere for our Terminex rep’s phone number, we found it but he wasn’t answering his phone on a Sunday morning.

So, we threw our clothes on. left our untouched breakfasts on the counter and rushed her to the ER. They took her in immediately. She hated the blood pressure cuff and threw that bottom lip out at the triage nurse quite a few times. They put her in trauma room 2, which scared me. We had a wonderful doctor and nurse, they worked really hard to figure out what she had injested, spent a long time on the phone with both poison control and Terminex. They had Jason return home to collect a sample off of another cabinet so they could take a look at it. The Dr. ended up deciding to keep her under observation for half the day rather than pump her stomach or induce vomitting. They gave her a good exam and I was worried that maybe it had burned her throat, but we don’t believe that it did. They decided to feed her and see if she could hold it down, GI problems were their biggest concern because they believe the substance she injested contained borax. She held down her food and did well until almost 1 pm so we got to come home.

She scared us, of course all the worst case scenarios run through your mind. And in the first few seconds after she swallowed it, my mom instict kicked in, all I could think about getting her to someone that could help her, not in 5 minutes, but now, right now. And our Terminex Rep’s words kept ringing in my ears “don’t let your little ones get ahold of this stuff, it will hurt them”. It will hurt them. It will hurt them. Then why the hell is it in my house?!?! We honestly thought it was ok since our kitchen is child proofed, thinking if the doors or drawers were open, we’d be rightr there. And we were, but it still happened, and fast. Lesson learned. And if someone puts a chemical in your house, KNOW exactly what it is. We spent way too much time trying to figure it out.

So now we just watch her close and thank God she’s ok.