Dammit Visine, I finally see you!

The BBQ Pit
1

Maybe it’s because of exhaustion, maybe it’s because of relief but I’m not going to get all cussy here. I am going to provide a bit of a public service announcement about a product I thought was pretty benign but that is, in fact, extremely dangerous.

Damn you all to hell, Visine. For years I thought you were just some pissy little salt water solution used by “the other” dopers. You’re over-the-counter, ubiquitous, and don’t have a big skull and crossbones on your label. So I relaxed. Mistakenly.

Yesterday when allergies turned my eyes red as Mao, I reached for a bottle for relief. My 11 month old daughter found the little plastic bottle quite soothing too. So I tighted the top and, it being too big to swallow, let her play with it.

Five minites later I looked down and see the top off and headed towards her mouth. I grabbed it away from her before she could put it in but also noticed the bottle was empty. On the back there’s the ingredients in type that resembles a midget’s cheat notes, they’re so small. Does it not strike you as a bit mad that a warning should be too tiny to read on a product intended for people whose eyes are in distress? So my wife read it out to me… “If ingested, call Poison Control”.

My daughter’s not just the apple of my eye, she’s the whole orchard. Holding her in one arm and talking on the phone to PC with the other hand, I hear that Visine contains tetrahydrozoline, which can quickly put her in a coma leading to death.

http://webmd.lycos.com/content/asset/adam_poison_visine_overdose

We spent the next 4 hours at the emergency room, absolutely worried beyond sick. I can’t tell you how much it sucks to have to force activated charcoal into a screaming baby’s mouth with a syringe while she fights back against it. Little lieu would look up at us with tears gushing out of her eyes wondering why mommy and daddy were doing this terrible thing to her. It was absolutely horrible! I’ve never felt like such a fuckup and bad person in all my life. I’d never seen her more than whimper a little and now she’s just bawling. So “Survival past 6 hours usually indicates recovery is likely”? Fuck you and you heartening words very much.

Last night we got up every two hours to stirr her and make sure she was still breathing. Know what it’s like to check for your baby’s breath? Can you imagine what it’s like to hold your hand by her mouth just to make sure she’s still breathing? Dammit. Dammit to hell. No parent should have that worry. Just the night before she was curled up like a little lima bean in my arms having fallen asleep after a bottle when I noticed her little regular breaths on my arm, punctuated every so often by a sigh. It was so cute and, now, I had to wonder if they would continue. Goddamn you, Visine.

I’d noticed the floor was wet as soon as I first realized the bottle was empty. There’s a good chance she didn’t actually drink any of the damn fluid but we couldn’t take that chance. We still had to go through the full treatment. It was my fault for not reading the contents on the bottle before. That’ll never happen again. But given what the manufacturing company knows about the danger of their product, it’s inconcievable to me that they don’t have childproof caps. Not only are they not childproof, I can easily open the bottle with one hand. My toddler can open it with two.

So Visine, get off your liable ass and get this fixed, Immediately, before someone else dies (The hookers in Vegas use this shit to knock out their johns like a date rape drug. Last year someone OD’d from it.) You’ll be receiving a letter from me shortly similar to this one. Don’t act and then yes, I will get pissy… very fucking pissy indeed.

2

So why did you give her the bottle to play with in the first place? I’m not trying to bait you or anything either. I had to take my firstborn to the hospital when she was about your kids age because she managed to drink most of a bottle of handsoap.

3

I’d not read the label. It was my own fault. I’d always assumed it was just a saline solution inside and the bottle was soft and she was intrigued by it. Being too big to swallow and with the lid screwed tight I thought it was safe. Not so.

4

Upon re-reading the op…I now see where you said that. My fault. Maybe I need the visine :slight_smile:

5

Damn, lieu. That had to suck! Glad the kid is ok.

6

It did, spooje, which is the point of my post… I don’t want any of my friends here to have to go through the same experience.

That and I’d like to see Pfizer, the manufacturer, to

  • put a legible warning label on the bottle, and
  • dispense it in a childproof bottle.

If they have a problem with that then I have a problem with them.

7

DAMN! Thanks for the heads up. I don’t have any Visine, I’ve got the cheap WAL*MART Equate version, that I keep on my nightstand. After reading this, I looked at the bottle, and all it gives is instructions on how to use. Duh. Put in eyes. No shit? Then it says “See Carton For Warning” Excuse me, but the friggin’ carton is gone 2 seconds after I’m home. If one of mine had gotten into it, I’d not have had the direction to call poison control. SHIT. Glad to hear the little one’s gonna be OK.

8

I needed something to laugh about today Weedeater and your sig line just did it.

9

Thank you very much for the info lieu. I’d always thought it was just saline also.

My heart-in-the-throat story:

One lazy beautiful saturday afternoon, my sweet then 3yr old daughter and I were lounging on the couch watching some cartoons. The sun was shining on us, we’d had a nice lunch and I drifted off for a few minutes.

Advil looks like candy, is small, easy to swallow and is a little bit sweet. She had gotten a bottle out of my purse and proceeded to eat them. (My culpability - They were packaged in the safety-capped bottle but I hadn’t closed the top correctly the last time I used some, which made it easier for her to get into the bottle) When I awoke (after about 5-10 minutes) I noticed that her hands and face had pink stains on them and that the bottle was empty. She had ingested about 10 pills.

I immediately called poison control and the wonderful woman there told me that since advil is non-corrosive and is generally well tolerated by the body if she vomited most of the pills up she should be okay.

I had noone to send to the store for me and did not have a car so I put her in her stroller and walked 3 blocks to the store to get some Ipecac syrup. That had to be the longest walk of my life - to and from the store. Took about half an hour tops but it seemed like an eternity. We finally got back home, I gave her the stuff, she vomitted forever and in the end was perfectly fine. (Although I must admit I kept waking her up that night to make sure she would wake up. I know, I know - paranoid am I.)

lieu, as for the breathing thing - my little girl has asthma (usually only aggravated when she’s around smoke or when she has a cold) so I know what it’s like to have a small child and not being able to sleep because you keep checking to make sure they’re still breathing. Heck, sometimes, even when I know she’s perfectly fine I feel the urge (and act on it) to make sure she’s still breathing.

Oh the joys of parenting.

The poison control people were great, wonderful, terrific, mindblowingly helpful. After the initial call I was instructed to call back at certain intervals so that they could let me know if she needed to go to the emergency room or not. At one point I was in the bathroom with the little one while at the specified call back time and damn if they didn’t call me to check and make sure 1) I was providing the treatment; 2) that I was doing it properly and 3) I was seeing the correct signs in her vomit that indicated the pills were coming up. I was very impressed and grateful that they took their jobs so seriously. So please, everyone, donate to your local poison control center - these people really save lives!