A Day in the Life of a Poison Center

The Illinois Poison Control Center posted stories of the 282 calls they took in one day. The calls range from requests for information to emergency room consultations. Here is a small sample:
# An adult female called worried because she took 2 Aleve® for her headache and then noticed that the pills expired 5 years ago.
# An adult woman called because a battery leaked out of her personal massager and she was concerned about battery acid burns.
# An emergency room called regarding a 29 year old male patient who had chewed and swallowed a fentanyl transdermal patch in an attempt to get high. He was found unresponsive by his mother and brought in via ambulance.
# An adult male called concerned about his friend who drank a very large amount of alcohol over the course of the previous evening after losing his job. His friend had vomited numerous times and had very garbled speech but is awake.
# An adult female called after she accidentally took 2 of her melatonin tablets.
# A 20 year old college student drank 2 Red Bulls® and took 6-7 Ritalin® tablets that belonged to a friend to help her stay awake and concentrate to study for a big exam. She stated she was having palpitations, vomiting and tremors.

This post drew interest from a local TV station, which then did a report on the poison center's funding problems. Incidentally, the nationwide number for poison control is 1-800-222-1222. Link -via Metafilter

My brother called poison control when I glued my hand to my face. They were very helpful and talked me through the ordeal.

FTR, I wasn't sniffing the glue.
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can't stop reading these...

some of them, you can't help but giggle or roll your eyes.

like the one where the mother was frantic because her child ate two gummy vitamins instead of one. glad she was upset instead of indifferent, but a lot of them seem to be people lacking decent sense...
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I knew capsaicin as the active ingredient in hot peppers. I had to go look it up to find out why anyone would use a cream! Turns out it is supposed to be good for arthritis. But don't get it anywhere near an orifice or even dry skin!
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By the way, great topic to put a post up about. These places are really needed (especially by hospitals and ERs!) and don't get nearly the recognition they deserve.
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Oops ...

"A woman called because she had reached into her bathroom cabinet in the dark for a tube of personal lubricant and accidentally used toothpaste instead."
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'A father called about tater tots he had cooked in the oven; after his kids ate them, the caller realized there
was a charred rat corpse in the oven'

Oh yum. I so wouldn't think to call the poison control centre for that though...
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LOL I love this one...

"Caller has one squirt bottle with bleach/water to disinfect her kitchen, and another with just water that she uses to spray the dog. She was going to spray the dog, but had mixed up the two bottles. She wanted to make sure she didn’t spray her dog with bleach, so she had squirted some in her mouth to check. It was the bleach."
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My husband had to work in poison control for a little while. He's a pharmacist and it was required course while he was in school.
He used to come home every day to tell me about the ridiculous calls he always got.
Dern, wish I could think of some of them, but it was such a long time ago.
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If I had any doubts before, I definitely don't want kids now after reading about all that they put in their mouths! Some of them are sad though, like the wife who found her husband covered in vomit with an empty pill bottle next to him
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# An adult woman called because a battery leaked out of her personal massager and she was concerned about battery acid burns.

That made me burst out laughing.
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"A toddler ingested an entire bottle of homeopathic teething tablets"

Reply "Get a clue mam. A bag of M&Ms has a greater risk of overdose. God help your child if it ever has a real problem."
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"A 24 year old woman called about her boyfriend. The woman had a Brazilian wax at a salon where they had used a numbing cream on the area and now her boyfriend is complaining numb lips, mouth and tongue. He was concerned that he may have ingested some of this numbing cream."
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