Why Things Could Be Worse

Found the baby today with an empty pill bottle. Felt every bit of blood drain from my extremities.

Turns out she'd used her new chair-scooting talent to gain access to the countertop, where she found the bottles of dog thyroid medicine. News Flash: child-proof caps only work if you are sure to screw them back on all the way. I asked her where the pills went, and she led me to the dogs' bed on the floor in our room, and then I actually saw a two-year-old do a double take: "They're gone!" Then she told me, "The doggie eat them. Ollie eat them all up." I asked her if she had eaten any and she said, "No. No, I feed them to the doggie." I looked in her mouth and couldn't see any evidence of green pill in there. So far the only pills she's had have been chewable vitamins so I was pretty sure she would have chewed on any pills she'd put into her mouth. Whew... I know she's seen me give the pills to the dogs in the morning so she must have known they were dog pills. And lucky us, Ollie will eat virtually anything you hand to her or that falls to the floor. Last fall we had to get her to throw up after she ate a cold pill that a friend dropped on the kitchen floor. So I knew the doggie in question had to be Ollie. Hope won't eat anything not on her pre-approved list, and even then only if it's offered by someone she knows.

So the baby's okay, but what about the dog? The first vet I called, a well-known emergency vet across the river, told me to bring her in so they could induce vomiting, but when I told them I had given her some hydrogen peroxide already to try to get her to hurl (based on past experience) the snotty girl on the phone told me that that was the absolute worst thing I could do. Way to handle the distressed pet owner, lady! Then I decided to try someplace closer, so I called a closer vet clinic and they asked me, "Do you have any hydrogen peroxide in the house?" So I guess it's only okay to induce vomiting if you're trained professionals with a fancy emergency clinic. The second clinic told me to bring her in right away if she didn't start vomiting, and of course she didn't.

I had to race around like a squirrel on amphetamines, since the baby was (of course) poopy as well as sopping wet from playing at the water activity table while I syringed hydrogen peroxide down the dog out in the back yard, plus the baby seat was sitting in the car not strapped down. So I violated all the laws of space and time getting that all squared away before throwing everybody in the car and driving like a bat out of hell to the vet clinic -- during rush hour and with expired tags, by the way, and through a notorious speed trap. Oddly enough, I did not burst directly into flame.

The vet gave her something that got her to hurl (and how!), and then gave her charcoal. He told me she threw up a very large amount of green pills, in fact he seemed more than a little impressed with the sheer volume of pill-spew they recovered. I was just relieved that he didn't bring it out to show me. Some things I just don't need to see for myself.

She should be just fine. The vet told me it was good that I'd discovered this so quickly and brought her in right away, since if we'd waited a while they wouldn't have been able to detoxify her with the vomiting and the charcoal. He didn't say she would have died, but I suspect she might have. She ate about seventy 0.3mg thyroxine pills. At least, she would have had a rough night.

A hundred and fifty dollar vet bill is a very cheap price to pay for an incident like this, my friends... I have gone and checked on the baby twice already and we are busily stowing anything resembling medicine up yet higher. And checking the child-resistant caps!

This reminds me of visiting my Dad and him showing me the guns he kept. In a dresser. And under the bed in the guest room. Unsecured. And his stepson regularly brought his young daughters over. I mentioned it to him how this might be sorta dangerous and he told me in all seriousness that "those girls know not to come up here unless someone brings them upstairs for some reason. They know they'll get their little behinds tanned if they come up here." ....Yeah, Dad, and children always do exactly what they are told and certainly never disobey for any reason! Although this was long before we really thought about having a baby of our own, I made a mental note not to bring children to Dad's house. I wouldn't be too tempted to let Delia out of my sight at their house anyway, since I'd be worried his evil wife would organize some kind of intervention and kidnap her with a pack of her church cronies, to get her out of our Godless, immoral house of sin and depravity where we worship the Devil etc etc. She sure as hell isn't going to be staying there without one of us for any length of time; who knows what kind of things they might expose her to, like one of their church services or something.

Anyway, all's well that ends well. Give your kids (and dogs) hugs and check your medicine cabinets.