Our daughter, Maisie, died after ingesting a methadone capsule at a neighbor’s home that was on the ground. Six adults, three of them docs, had been together with her the complete night. Nonetheless, the small white capsule discovered her hand, after which, as a nine-month-old child would do, discovered her mouth. After placing Maisie to mattress throughout her regular routine, her mom MaryBeth discovered her useless from an overdose the next morning.
Screams, tears, paramedics, coronary heart breaking cellphone calls, funeral companies, and a police investigation adopted. None of it modified the end result. Maisie died as a result of medicine was not safely saved up and away, out of her sight and attain. Maisie’s loss of life ought to by no means have occurred.
Ultimately, Maisie’s tragic loss of life was casually labeled to be merely an “unintentional overdose” – with no accountability or motion, solely the traumatic lack of life and grieving dad and mom, pals, and household. As her dad and mom, we’ve unfold her story and legacy to whomever will pay attention through native information, the entrance web page of USA Right now, podcasts, well being organizations, advocacy teams, and with the federal government at each native and federal ranges with one aim: We are not looking for there to be any extra households with our expertise. We would like adjustments in conduct, packaging, and practices so no households undergo like ours and there are not any funerals for an pointless sufferer of the opioid epidemic.
Sadly, poisonings of kids, like Maisie, will not be unusual. Roughly 35,000 younger kids are dropped at the emergency room every year as a result of they received into medicines that had been left inside attain. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority will not be life threatening – however kids proceed to search out substances they need to not have entry to.
What are you able to do to maintain your family members protected? Preserve medicines, nutritional vitamins, and different dietary supplements (together with gummies) “up and away” in a spot the place younger kids can’t see or attain them. To assist defend your kids or grandchildren:
- hold all medicines in a child-resistant container with the security cap locked – many different containers, corresponding to capsule bins, will not be and might be simply opened by kids.
- hold medicines up and away and out of sight and attain of younger kids, like in a excessive cupboard or on a excessive closet shelf.
- by no means depart unfastened tablets out on a counter or desk – hold tablets in child-resistant containers till proper earlier than you’re taking them.
It’s simple for tablets to fall on the ground and roll out of sight the place younger kids may discover them. Take time to brush or vacuum the ground if kids shall be visiting. If you’re touring, both with younger kids or to go to them, you should definitely pack your medicines in child-resistant containers. When you’re staying in a lodge, you’ll be able to put medicines within the lodge room protected or on a excessive shelf within the closet.
Past your daily, you can too promote unit of use packaging (e.g., blister packs) for medicine which can be identified to be deadly in small quantities. Unit of use packaging permits the particular person taking the medicine to solely entry one capsule at a time and helps to maintain medicine out of kids’s attain.
One capsule can kill. Youngster-resistant packaging legal guidelines have modified little since 1970, and with the SUPPORT Act of 2018, the U.S. authorities has the authority to make our medicines safer for everybody. We don’t get to boost Maisie, however we are going to at all times be her dad and mom, and supporting and selling protected medicine practices is a method for us to try this.
To be taught extra about medicine security and protected storage, go to Up and Away Marketing campaign | Treatment Security Program | CDC.
Adam and MaryBeth Gillan reside in Rochester, NY, and are dad and mom to 4 kids: Rhona, Maisie, Conway, and Archie. Adam works for a big shopper items firm and MaryBeth sits on the board of Camp Stella Maris in Livonia, NY and oversees the Purple Mild Undertaking, a fund in Maisie’s reminiscence.
