3/24/2008 Robotrip Incident

March 21st was my brother, Kelly’s 32nd birthday and his wife hosted a celebration at their house on Saturday. Lots of friends and family showed up and everyone had tons of fun.

At some point in the evening I was talking to a friend of ours about how much sickness circulated this winter. We were comparing our "sickest sick" horror stories and both of ours involved accidental overdoses of cold medicine.

Last month I came down with the 4th case of the flu this year; that’s right, since Jan 2008! All morning I struggled to keep up with my son, and as soon as he laid down for his nap I prepared to do the same thing. Unable to breathe through my nose, I wanted to take some cold medicine and decided to take the same thing Fox had taken since it had worked for him.

The night before I had taken NyQuil. This liquid medicine/sedative comes with a dosage cup with graduated cup with measurements in tablespoons, and the general adult dose is 2 tablespoons. SO, as I assessed the medicines, I grabbed the same cup I used the night before, and the bottle which I had administered Fox earlier that day.

The adult dosage listed on the bottle of Children’s Triaminic Severe Cold and Fever was 2 teaspoons, so I filled the NyQuil cup to the second mark. When I was downing the medicine I thought to myself, "Wow. This is a lot of liquid. I gulped twice.", but figured it made sense and I was just sick and tired.

I had already prepared a bed on the couch with the necessities (sleeping bag, remote, water, tissues, my blankie, pillows, phone, M&Ms) and made my way to the bedroom to re-robe into my pajamas for the full effect, and this is when I realized all was not well.

As I bent over to pick up my fleece jammers, all of the blood rushed from my head and for a moment I couldn’t remember what the hell I was doing. I stood up and looked in the mirror, and discovered that I couldn’t focus on the object which I tried to directly gaze. All I saw was a pulsing, dark blur in the center of my focus, so my peripheral field was the only useful vision I had. A wave of panic overtook me as I concluded that I was much sicker than I thought, and had no idea what I would do if there were an emergency with Fox.

Psychedellic


Attempting to dress myself, my limbs felt huge and heavy, and I had no concept of time. I got the pants on backwards and the top on inside-out, which I didn’t notice till much later. Finally making it to the couch I collapsed onto my blue sleeping bag and remember wondering if I would be able to stay awake long enough to get myself zipped up into the bag, then suddenly I was breathing heavily like I had just done sprints and my head was damp with sweat. The next moment I was back to feeling the heavy sensation of impending sleep. I reached for my glass of water and my arm fell towards the floor. After fighting with my arm for what seemed like an eternity, I decided to call my husband to see if he would be coming home soon. I told him that I was "really, really sick" and that he needed to come home "immediately". He assured me that I wasn’t that bad off and that I should just try to fall asleep while Fox napped. I hung up realizing that he didn’t understand the severity of the situation and thought about calling him back, but then I forgot what he had said, and I was feeling sleepier than before as if I might be able to sleep after all. It was then that I heard Fox jumping around in his crib.

That was one of the most miserable moments of my entire life, but much like childbirth, the Backstreet Boys, and Full House I was able to block it out almost completely. Only until I was speaking with my friend this weekend was I able to remember the magnitude of that awful experience. In retrospect it was comparable to a Jim Morrison style acid trip circa 1969, complete with periods of "drunken gibberish" and visual hallucinations.

morrison


The moral of the story is ’cold medicine is no joke.’ , and be very careful when you take it. Overdosing on cold medicine is exactly like taking hard drugs, and I completely see how it is easily transformed into crystal meth. Anything containing diphenhydramine, amphetamines,or antihistamines is suspect. It’s just lucky that I give Fox medicine in a little, baby-syringe with measurements on it, I can’t imagine that babies would dig tripping out like that.

LSD