The good news is that most of these exposures aren’t life-threatening, and many are managed over the phone by poison control centers without the need for a hospital visit or 9-1-1 call. Most of these children are getting into medications in their own home that parents or other family members haven’t secured. 1 Children at these ages are becoming more mobile and exploring–and getting into things, including medications. Of these calls, 53% were for children between 1 and 2 years old. Poison control centers across the country fielded over 440,000 calls in 2013 related to children accidentally taking medications not meant for them. As you gather your patient into your arms, she’s more lifeless than any child you’ve held before, limp and barely breathing. You reach the patient, a 4-year-old girl lying on top of a city trash collection bin, still being shaken by Grandma. Through the maze of vehicles in the driveway, you see Grandma violently shaking and slapping your patient, repeatedly yelling, “Stay awake baby girl!” Your call has just escalated. “She’s in the garage with her grandmother. He meets you at your rescue door after you park in the driveway. As you drive into the narrowed streets with cookie-cutter houses, you see an older man waving to flag you down. The address is in a clean, middle-class neighborhood that isn’t known for problems with violence or illicit drugs, so you turn down the dispatcher’s offer of a simultaneous law enforcement dispatch. Thankfully, it’s coded as an omega overdose. The muffled overhead speech of your dispatcher is barely audible as you start moving toward your rescue, but you do hear that a child has taken something but isn’t initially symptomatic. You and your partner are sitting in the station when the familiar sound of the rescue tones goes off.
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