Manwaring Established 2003

POISON CONTROL SCARE!

For the first time EVER  I had to call the Poison Control Hotline!  

I walk into the living room and there sits Spencer on the floor.  His symptoms included: face is red, thick drool is dripping from his mouth soaking the carpet, weird gagging noises trying to swallow, but can't swallow so each time he tries he gags some more then more spit runs down his chin and he cries.

I first picked him up and checked his mouth to see if he had something stuck in his throat, but nothing was there.  Then I start scanning the area trying to figure out what is going on. Under him is a stem of one of our house plants with about 1/2 inch of a bite taken out of it.  It didn't take long to realize he had eaten some of the plant and it was causing problems.  

I had no clue what to do and he just kept trying to swallow with no success and crying in between trying to swallow. He filled a hand towel with spit running from his mouth.  I grabbed the phone and first called the pediatricians office because I really had no clue what to do. (At this time I was ready to throw both kids in the car and take him to the ER) The nurse was really nice and said that if he was breathing/ crying I shouldn't be too worried yet and gave me the Poison Control Hotline number. But before I could call them I had to know what kind of plant he ate.  I started searching the internet for the name of the plant....seemed to take forever, but found it fairly quickly.  Made the call and by that time his face wasn't as red and he was still having a hard time swallowing, but didn't have the panicked cry that he did before.   

Come to find out the plants leaves don't do anything, but the stem when eaten numbs the mouth and closes the throat, but since he didn't eat more than a half inch, by the time I got off the phone he was acting pretty much normal.  Within 45 min he was back to normal as if nothing had ever happened...

Moral of the story...find out the name of your house plants and make sure that they aren't poisonous and what the symptoms would be if eaten!  

***On a side note...Spencer did not learn anything from this and continues to dig in the dirt of my house plants DAILY and eat whatever his little hand can find to pull out of the pots!