The first thing I said to my husband today, when he got out of bed and greeted me in the kitchen, was, “They closed the hospital ER for 3 hours yesterday because it was so over-crowded.”

I don’t know what the ER is like where you all are from, but here, you know you’ll be waiting for 9 hours on a good day; usually 12 hours on most. With the flu season here, and all the snowbirds in town (seniors from up north who come to sunny Arizona for the winter), ER is a horrible place to be.

I remember being grateful this morning, looking at the newspaper article about the hospital closure, and knowing that none of us had flu symptoms that might drive us to ER later.

Then, at 4:30 pm, Israel started yelling, “We need to get Aiden to the hospital.” He ran Aiden to the kitchen, Aiden hurling white and yellow foam from his mouth. Israel told me, “I found Aiden eating Advil.”

I called 911, who called for the paramedics, and then transferred me to poison control. We had no idea how many pills were in that bottle. There were 35 left out of a hundred. I remember the lady on the phone saying, “Worse case scenario is, he ate 65.”

Right on beat, the firemen showed up, gave Aiden a thick, black drink they call “charcoal” and sent Aiden and I off to the hospital.

On the way there I wondered what might happen. Of course, death is always on your mind at times like these. I doubted it would come to that. We had a friend who overdosed on Tylenol this same time last year. He had to have a liver transplant, and because of complications during the surgery, he is now forever like an infant.

So these are the thoughts running through my mind: if it’s bad, he may need a liver transplant. Hopefully it won’t be that bad.

Last October, my brother-in-law found Aiden at the bottom of his pool when we were there for a pool party (I hate pool parties). There were three of us adults “watching” him, not including the other adults monitoring their own children. Due to some miscommunication, none of the three of us, who were supposed to be watching him, were actually watching him for about five or ten minutes, until Russel saw Aiden at the bottom of the pool and pulled him out. Aiden seemed lifeless for a brief moment, but then coughed the water out and was eventually fine after 10 minutes of hysteria.

And now, this evening, two and a half months later, I was driving him to ER for ingesting an unknown amount of adult Advil. Aiden gets into more trouble than my other kids did; not because he’s more of a rascal, but because he’s part of a larger group with more distractions. We just don’t monitor him as carefully.

Aiden is home now, healthy, alive, and sleeping in his bed. At the hospital they gave him another cup of the charcoal, this time mixed with icy chocolate milk. It still looked disgusting, and stained his lips black, but like a good boy, he drank it to the bottom and asked for more.

The doctor told me that Advil doesn’t cause the same problems as Tylenol. Generally it will thin out the blood if left in the system. To avoid that more minor complication, they give you the charcoal mixture, which binds to the medicine, deterring absorption, and carrying it out through the bowels.

So, Mommies and Daddies, give your kiddies a big hug and kiss, and then go make sure you put away your meds and cleaning solutions. May we all live to see our children grow up. And if we don’t, I hope we make many wonderful memories to keep in our hearts.