Thursday, February 26, 2009

Little Ones and Hand Sanitizer

Hey guys -
I have gotten this in a forwarded email before but then I had a friend email me that it had actually happened to a kid in her son's class so read on and be careful with the hand sanitizer and your little ones!!

Yesterday, my youngest daughter, Halle , who is 4, was rushed to the emergency room by her father for being severely lethargic and incoherent. He was called to her school by the school secretary for being 'very VERY sick.' He told me that when he arrived, Halle was barely sitting in the chair. She couldn't hold her own head up and when he looked into her eyes, she couldn't focus them. He immediately scooped her up and rushed her to the ER, and then called me. When we got there, they ran blood test after blood test and did x-rays, every test imaginable. Her white blood cell count was normal, nothing was out of the ordinary. The ER doctor told us that he had done everything that he could do so he was sending her to Saint Francis for further tests. Right when we were leaving in the ambulance, her teacher came to the ER and, after questioning Halle's classmates, we found out that she had licked hand sanitizer off her hand. Hand sanitizer, of all things. But it makes sense. These days they have all kinds of different scents and when you have a curious child, they are going to put all kinds of things into their mouths. When we arrived at Saint Francis, we told the ER doctor there to check her blood alcohol level, and yes we did get weird looks, but they did it. The results showed her blood alcohol level was 85% -- six hours after we first took her. There's no telling what it would have been if we would have requested it at the first ER. Since then, her school and a few surrounding schools have taken this out of the classrooms of all the lower grade classes, but what's to stop middle and high schoolers from ingesting the stuff? After doing research on the Internet, we have found out that it only takes 3 squirts of the stuff to be fatal in a toddler. For her blood alcohol level to be so high was to compare someone her size to drinking something 120 proof. So please PLEASE don't disregard this because I don't ever want anyone else to go through what my family and I have gone through.

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