Lock-Up the Visine!

You know how you see those crazy posts on Facebook about a friend of a friend whose second cousin’s kid did something like ate Pop Rocks (I think I just dated myself) and ended up in the hospital or something? Well, what I’m about to tell you is legit. This came from a good friend of mine, and it just happened a couple of days ago (I’ve changed the names because I haven’t got her permission to post this):

Jane (age 2) got adult sunscreen in her eyes and started crying so I grabbed her and put Visine drops in her eyes to try and flush it out. That still wasn’t calming her down so I used saline solution and tried that also. She was still just upset at this point and I thought it was still the sunscreen. I took her back down to beach and she wanted back in ocean. So John (Jane’s dad) took her. Shortly, he started yelling for me. When I got out to her she was acting sleepy and her eyes looked weird. We called poison control and they told me to call an ambulance. By this point her pupils had turned pinpoint and she was passing out. I carried her up to the house and jumped in the car because I was worried an ambulance would take too long. Long story short, the doctor said that Visine is extremely dangerous for children because it acts like a blood pressure medicine and can rapidly drop blood pressure, heart rate and effect breathing which is why she was passing out. The eyes absorbed it and the alcohol in them also made her drunk like. It was the scariest moment of my life and I felt horrible I had done it to her. Once she was able to get the chemicals out of her system she was much better and is perfectly fine now.

So I did a quick Google search and I can’t really find anything about this specific reaction, but I did find something on the FDA about serious warnings if they were to ingest it. I’m kind of a Visine addict, so I always have it in my bathroom. This just served as a good reminder to me to keep that stuff away from little hands. Pills and other medicines are more obvious to keep away from children, but things like Visine and Nasal Sprays aren’t so obvious.

So if you haven’t in a while, go through your house, car, purse, etc. to do a quick safety sweep making sure all of these things are out of your child’s reach!