safety check.

this was sent to me by ailsa..

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Hello friends,

 

I need to share something that happened to us this weekend because I still can't believe it happened. I've made it as short as possible.

 

I came home from Winnipeg Friday evening to a cold house - Natasha who had been home with my mother in law for the Thursday night while I was away mentioned that they couldn't get the heat to come on. Nuts I thought - the boiler finally went. I put a call in to a service person who was coming Saturday between 3 and 5pm.

 

Natasha work up at 4am this morning (saturday) -  gagging and throwing up. This went on for almost 8 hours when she started to complain of sharp stomach pain. Honestly - I thought it was her appendix. Off to ER we went. Assessment - gastrointestinal virus and sent us home. Oddly - while at the hospital, Natasha never gagged or was sick. When we came home she started to feel ill within 30 minutes. I thought it was the car ride and the piece of toast she tried to get down.

 

Boiler Service man arrived at 5pm - yep the boiler was dead. He pulled out his Carbon Monoxide detector then jumped to his knees and ran to open the front door and yelled where the back door was and flew that open. Furnaces and Boilers are red tagged (making them inoperable and service men are forced to cut it off for safety) when Carbon Dioxide readings are at 20. Ours was at 630. the 1500 - 2000 level is when you don't wake up. It was clear that Natasha had CO poisoning and given my 4 month situation i was a little worried.

 

I called my doctor who said 'grab coats and go back to ER right now'. You know those people that get to skip the entire waiting room line? That was us tonight. 5 minutes and we were in. They dont mess around with this. Cognitive tests, neuro tests, oxygen tanks, talks of splitting us into hyperbaric chambers, and blood tests. My sister was called because Natasha would stay at Children's with her and I would have to go to VGH.  Nat's blood test was only .02 off of needing to spend a week in a hyperbaric chamber given her longer exposure and I was .04 off.

 

We're lucky. Really lucky. This could have been one of those horrible stories. Its odourless and oftern symtoms are confused with the flu or simply being run down. We didnt have a CO detector in our house - some smoke detectors have a dual system. Mine are only 4 years old but they were clearly not built in. I never really thought to have one - everything is serviced yearly in my house so I really thought we were covered. So learn from us - buy one. Put it near where your furnance or boiler is.

 

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g. xo