The High Price of Beauty

Last night we were all winding down around 8 p.m. We had dinner, bathed Lexi and Allen was showering. I decided to put dinner away quick (we're talking 5 pieces of pizza into plastic baggies and then in the fridge) while Lexi played in the family room. When I was done, she wasn't in the family room anymore. She wasn't in her room either. I saw her baby stroller in front of our bathroom door. Allen was in showering and Lexi had gone in the bathroom with him. When I opened the door, she had a bottle of nail polish remover in her hands and was shaking it around. I grabbed it quick and found the lid loose and the bottle empty. I asked her, "Did you drink this!?!" "I drinked it!" she responded with glee.

Let me just say that I haven't used nail polish remover in at least a year. All of my other stuff that could be dangerous is on the highest shelf in the bathroom. The only stuff on the bottom shelf is towels. I have no idea where that bottle came from. It could have been empty when she picked it up, but why would I keep an empty bottle laying around?

I called poison control and they said to take her to the ER. They said they would call ahead to let them know we were on our way. In the mean time, Lexi was acting totally fine. She didn't smell like nail polish remover. She wasn't acting drunk (or more drunk than usual). But, it only takes 1/3 of a teaspoon of nail polish remover to be toxic for a kid. She had possibly ingested 6 times that! If she had swallowed some, it wouldn't have been obvious until she was really, really sick. It would have slowly messed with her blood chemistry and led to blindness. I really didn't think that was the road we were on, but we figured better safe than sorry with a quiet danger like that.

So, off we go. We went to the University of New Mexico ER. They have their own pediatric emergency room. That was awesome. We waited for about 5 minutes and went back to a bed. Lexi was happy, inquisitive and very pleasant. The doctor said we would be there at least 12 hours and they would need to draw blood every 2 hours to see if she had ingested anything. Rather than poke her every 2 hours, they decided to put in an IV. Lexi had been really nice until that point. I can attest: IV's don't feel all that great. The worst part was that they put it in her elbow area so they had to tape her arm to a board to prevent it from bending. She was pissed!!!

After they did all of that, they told us we'd be going up to peds. I ran home to get the portable DVD player (best invention ever!) and some other things to tide us over. I also called about 5 people as Allen and I were supposed to talk in Sacrament meeting, I was in charge of the lunch for everyone in nursery and Allen was teaching in EQ. Go figure - the day we're like running all of the meetings, everything completely unravels.

Anyhow, I got back to the hospital around 11:30 and went in to find Lexi and Allen. They had been moved to the GPU (general pediatric unit). I asked for directions and head out. Well, 45 minutes later, I was back where I started. I managed to find them at around 12:15 a.m. I was so frustrated. The people in the ER told me the wrong floor in the totally wrong wing of the hospital. Turns out, I was about 100 yds. from the elevators when I was in the ER, but went to the old hospital wing and on 3 different floors there before coming all the way back to the new area only to end up going to 3 different floors there before someone finally told me where the heck the sick kids were kept! Ugh.

Lexi was wide awake and in one of those fancy metal cribs. At 1 a.m, I put on a movie for her and stayed up with her while Allen slept on the bed that was in the room. At 3 a.m., she finally nodded off. At 3:50, a nurse came in to take vitals and woke her up. She started crying and was obviously frustrated about her arm. I was in those really comfortable hospital chairs (read: heavy sarcasm). I held her a bit and put her back down. She slept another 45 minutes and woke up mad again. So it went until 6 a.m. when Allen woke up and I laid down. I tell you, that chair and my tail bone did not get along! Lexi was up before 8 so we all got some breakfast (they had room service) and waited for freedom.

She held her arm up like this quite a bit. She kept pointing to the little plastic outlet while telling me she had a "boo-boo". I said, "You see that plastic sticking out?" "Yes, my plastic hurts!"

I hate these gowns! They don't even close for a 2 year old.

We were approaching the 12 hour mark and really looking forward to going home at this point. So, we just kept asking every nurse we saw if we could go. Our nurse, who happened to be LDS, agreed to take the IV out and start our paperwork. Finally, at 10:30 the doctor came in and said Lexi was good to go. We left around 11 a.m.

Thankfully, with all of the blood work they did, they found no methanol in Lexi's system. It turns out she hadn't ingested any of the remover. I kept expecting to get a big talking to about home safety. I could hear them whispering as I walked the halls, "There's that lady who let her kid drink nail polish remover. Yeah, she's pregnant too. More idiots reproducing, huh?" Doctor reassured us that kids do this stuff, but we need to be more careful (duh!). We're just glad all went well and no one called child protective services! We're tired (as can be expected) and embarrassed, but I'm sure we'll be ok.