One man’s voice

Always lock everything when you have kids

Posted on February 25th, 2008 in On Children, On Parenting, Personal Messages

The call was frantic, the tone, fearful. It was about 10:30 in the morning.

“I have to take Aaron to the emergency room. He got into the kitchen cabinet and got some of the medicine and they said I have to take him to the emergency room.”

After calming my wife down a little bit, and trying to decipher the words coming back, it was made clear to me that my 2 and half year old son had somehow managed his way into our locked kitchen, moved a chair from the table to the counters, climbed the chair, stood upon the counter and opened an overhead cabinet, reached inside and grabbed a few medications that were in there and managed, somehow, to open two childproof lids and peel the backing of tablets that are not meant for children.

I know this sounds like something cooked up by Colonel Hannibal Smith of the A-Team, but sadly, this entire idea was cooked up by my two and half year old son.

The boy can climb. He can develop execution plans quickly and he executes those plans just as quickly. If he were a CEO right now his companies would be billion dollar companies.

But alas, he is just a toddler. And when he goes executive things usually go to hell in handbasket on greased rails with hair on fire. Today was no exception.

The aftermath of this situation was troubling, expensive and tiring. My wife had to prepare all five kids to get out of the house when she originally did not intend for any of them to leave the house that early. Then she had to pack them up (quickly), load them up and get to the hospital. Then she had to register my son with all the other kids in tow while trying to figure out where we were going to get the $100 to pay the co-pay for this “incident”. Then, after my son was called in, she had to manage all five kids, one of which was freaking out because he was in the emergency room, while answering questions from the doctors.

As if this wasn’t bad enough she also had to handle the kids while my son was poked and prodded so the doctors could determine what course of action to take. Because the incident involved medications that could potentially have poisoning or respiratory implications, the doctors didn’t want to take any chances so they decided to administer activated charcoal to my son to absorb any medications that may be in his system. They also decided at this time that my son needed to be admitted to the hospital for overnight observation.

Quick side bar: Have you ever tried to force a 2 year old to eat powdery chunks of activated charcoal? Neither had my wife. And apparently neither had the doctors. Ultimately it took chocolate sauce and a very forceful nurse to force my sons mouth open while holding his face still and “injecting” the mixture down his throat. That must have been a pleasant experience for my son, huh? And don’t forget, mom was trying to keep him calm during this whole ordeal. Nice for her too, huh?

I had asked my wife to call me to let me know how things were going. Knowing how Kaiser Permanente handles emergencies, and given the fact that my wife’s cell phone was sitting on the counter at home, dead, I figured that two hours was more than enough wait time before calling.

So at about 12:30 I called to talk to her and she informed of what all was going on, that my son was going to be transported by ambulance to the hospital in Hayward and that she and the kids were getting hungry.

Knowing this I decided that I needed to get to the hospital.

I drove a little faster than I normally drive and managed to get from Concord to Fremont in about 25 minutes (not bad, eh Mario Andretti?), picked up some food for my wife and kids, and headed to the emergency room. I met up with my wife in time to walk with her and my son to the first X-Ray exam after which we came back to an awaiting EMT team waiting to transport my son to the Hayward hospital.

After taking my girls to a friends for the time being, I got to the hospital. My son had just been admitted and as I got there I was walked through some of the preliminaries of the night. A few minutes later and administrator came in to explain to us how things would be working and that when we were discharged we would be asked kindly for the $500 for the admission.

From this point on things were a bit of a blur for me. I stayed with my wife and son until about 6:15 when I left to pick up our daughters. I brought them home, took care of some family business that needed sorting out with the girls and prepared ourselves for bed.

Now that I have some time to sit and think about all this I can’t help but wonder what parts of this could have been avoided by simply making sure the kitchen gate lock was locked, or making sure the cabinets were locked or making sure that the medications were somewhere else.

I know that hindsight is always 20/20. But foresight can be an invaluable tool in keeping things safe and effective. So though I am glad that my son received the treatment he did, and I am glad that we were able to spend the night in a hospital without a $10,000 bill when leaving, I am a little irked at the thought that a weekend away for my wife and I was spent with my wife and son spending the night at a hospital together.

The good news is that my son is fine and should be coming home tomorrow. The doctors want to make sure that he doesn’t exhibit any negative health indicators through the night. Given the way he was acting before I left, I am almost certain the doctors will be asking him to leave first thing in the morning.