Last week was one of “those” weeks. After returning home from a fantastic trip to Keystone, we were bombarded with less-than-stellar news. From the continued uncertainty of Jamie’s great consulting gig to a bombshell my in-laws dropped on us that I can’t get into at this point.
Oh, and then there was our first call ever to Poison Control. I was honestly one of those mothers who thought it would never happen. We keep all our cleaning supplies behind child-proof doors and our prescription medicine is in child-proof containers.
So, just what happened?
Simple: the self-destructive world of modeling.
Haddie had her friend Alex over for a playdate. They were upstairs disassembling her room, trying on all her princesses dresses and playing fashion show. They would come downstairs, do a few twirls for me and then head back up to change their clothes.
I didn’t suspect anything until I put Haddie to bed four hours later. She had a cold last week and I gave her a Triaminic Thin Strip to help with her nighttime cough.
She looked at me sheepishly: “Alex and I ate some of those today.”
“Ate what?”
“The medicine.”
I raced into the bathroom and sure enough, there were numerous packets of used strips in the garbage. And I did what any mother would do when she was sure her daughter was near death: I dumped them out, counted how many they downed (eight), called Alex’s mom and then Poison Control. Oh, and I FREAKED OUT.
Fortunately, enough time had passed that if they would have overdosed it would have already happened.
Gee. What a comforting thought.
When I asked Haddie how they opened the packets (which I have trouble opening), Hadley explained that Alex had simply cut them open with some scissors.
And thus she shall be known as The Enabler.
We were lucky it turned out OK but it made me much more cautious about what we have in our medicine cabinet that she can access.
It also confirmed that models + drugs = bad news.
I had my own episode as a wee lassie when I ate a bottle of Flintstone vitamins. I was spared getting my stomach pumped but it was a lesson well learned.
One of my favorite medicine memories is of my friend Avril. When we were in ninth grade, we went on a class trip to Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. We had an extensive packing list and were instructed to bring a large first-aid kit.
One night when we were bored and hungry, Avril discovered some chocolate-covered tablets in her supplies. She read the label and dismissed it because she didn’t know what it meant. The word? Constipation. Those tasty chocolate-covered pills she ate? Some tasty candy called ex-lax®. Funniest thing? Her dad is a doctor.
She experienced first-hand the adverse effect of taking them.
And those white pants she was wearing the next day at that museum?
Think brown.
So make me feel better. What run-ins have you had with Poison Control?
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 