My two year-old has just downed almost an entire bottle of strawberry-flavoured paracetemol. The old childproof cap turned out to be not-so-childproof.

It’s off to hospital, now, and probably not back for hours. And hours.

Ah, the adventure of raising children! 😕

my 3yr old cousin had half a bottle of white wine from the “chid proof fridge” last weekend… 😯

best of luck – fwiw, they’ll take that pretty damn seriously and he’ll be assessed sharpish

I’d take the bottle along too, so they can see what the biggest potential dose has been

(you’re aware it’s a pretty urgent thing, I assume ?)

I hope he’s ok…need to get it sorted sharpish and they’ll fast track him. Bring the bottle as has been said.

I hope he hasn’t had to wait to long for you to create a new thread before taking him to hospital!

Some people might have phoned an ambulance!

Yeah, thanks for that, scaredypants. My wife phoned the NHS help line immediately.

Updates later.

Fingers crossed for the little monster…

bet he pukes in the car 😀

Good luck – that’s serious!

kids? bastards the lot of them!
Well not literally as that would mean…Ive not thought this through have I?

One good thing about strawberry paracetamol – kids love it. The bad thing is that they love it. Hope it all goes well for you!

Stoner – father who seems to have spent more time in hospital with his two boys than he has teaching them how to do stuff without maiming themselves 🙄

the kid’ll be fine

from the “just” in the OP we get to assume it wasn’t that long ago so, even if the dose was big it’s manageable at the hospital – and kids generally cope better with overdoing paracetamol than grown-ups (mostly ‘cos they throw up more readily)

Hope the kid is okay. They need to establish the dose ASAP. Take the bottle with you! Paracetamol is given at 120 mg/5 ml. How many ml did the child take. And how big was the bottle? A 70ml bottle contains 1680 mg of paracetamol (just under one day’s adult dose). If the infant weighs 10 kilos that is 168 mg/kg. That is a high dose and you’ll be seen fast. Tell them this if you are not. Fortunately swift action and an antidote can be given. If the kid is sick, even better.

Drive carefully. And don’t forget the bottle. Did I say don’t forget the bottle?

‘ere, stoner – how’s your lad’s finger ?

icky but healing. cheers
probably lost the tip but the healing is coming on well.
had a dressing change at the docs this afternoon and due back with the surgeon next week.
He doesnt care though. Makes me all gooey looking at it though…

Got 10mth old grand daughter for her first overnighter next weekend. She is just at the toddling stage. We have been warned about sending her back in one piece unlike her big bro 🙄

When I was a kid I drank half a bottle of Milton fluid, which is pretty much the same thing. Basically, the A and E doctors made me drink milk until I pissed myself, so my top tip is to take some spare clothes. This was 30 years ago mind, medicine may have advanced since then.

Hope the little chap is ok, hardcore drug abuse, he’ll be a roadie then.

Good luck man, it may be traumatic but they wont faff over it and he will be fine.

Keep us posted

djaustin – Member
And how big was the bottle? A 70ml bottle contains 1680 mg of paracetamol (just under one day’s adult dose).

Normal adult daily dose is 4 g per day (2 x 500mg tablet, 4x a day)

Fingers crossed all is well …. A few months ago our 2 1/2 year old presented us with an empty (large) bottle of calpol, having drunk 80% of the contents. She’s fine but that was a fun morning in A&E! We later discovered that she could reach the shelf where the calpol had been, by climbing up the heated towel rail. That’ll teach me for taking her bouldering

Doh of course it is 😳 I am was working back from a 200ml bottle, but thought that would be quite a chug! Paediatric dosing is full of pitfalls.

We taught our two to take tablets from an early age, once they reached a 250 mg unit dose. And I always carried a satchet of calpol in my wallet for emergencies. Funny thing is, it was always other kids who needed it. Remarkable if you met Son1 – an accident waiting to happen.

He’ll be fine our 2 year old did exactly the same thing. They worked out the toxic dose to be around 1.5 full bottles from his weight.. Didn’t evn ask us in.

calpol? or similar? Isn’t there about 2 paracetamol in them? Overdose I think not.

faz, depends – I think you can get a 200ml bottle of the 6+ stuff which would be 10grams, plenty for a small child or even an unlucky adult

Just talked to my wife. The boy will need a blood test to verify, but the hospital thinks that he didn’t get enough of the bottle to have had the worst effects.

Luckily, he’s klutzy enough to have spilled some on the floor before getting it into his mouth.

I never thought I would be pleased that he spills so much.

Good news 🙂

I never thought I would be pleased that he spills so much.

You’ll have to call him Onan from now on.

good stuff 🙂

* runs around the house testing all the Domestos bottle tops…*

Hope all is well.
Calpol/paracetamol should be taken seriously tbh.
A paediatric dr friend of mine told me about a young kid who’s mum was giving them ‘Calpol’ whilst in Spain, as one teaspoon every so and so (uk dosing). It turns out the Spanish version is about 5 times as concentrated. The kid now has someone else’s liver……

DrP

Good to hear things are fine and yes what Dr P said.

Paracetamol OD is serious see so many take it as OD as it’s easy to get hold of. It wrecks livers if not caught in time or if taking accidentally too much, don’t fob it off.

runs around the house testing all the Domestos bottle tops

We just put anything ‘drinkable’ up high until ours were old enough to be able to understand the importance of not drinking it. As the op found these caps aren’t fool (or child) proof 100% of the time.

Hope all going well. After a 2am calpolling about a week ago I must have not put the lid back on fully and left the bottle in jrs room. She came in at 6 saying ‘me had me medicine now’ and waving the empty bottle. Again, call to NHS direct, calculation of max amount in bottle prior to her getting it and then guesstimating of how much was on carpet and pj’s. Then relief. Horrible.

Jesus, that’s scary. Hope everything is OK with your nipper.

Paracetamol is such a potentially dangerous medication to have around the house in a sweet, drinkable form, safety cap or no safety cap. Especially compared to liquid ibuprofen, which is just as effective (and perhaps even better) at lowering fever.

faz03

calpol? or similar? Isn’t there about 2 paracetamol in them? Overdose I think not.
Its precisely that attitude that makes calpol (and paracetemol based medicines in general) a problem.

Firstly by definition anything over the stated dose is an overdose.
The correct dosage for a 2 year old is unto 7.5mL of Calpol Infant every 4 hours. So consuming a 100 mL bottle is 13x overdosed, and a 200 mL bottle is over 26x the dose. That is a bit like an adult taking 26-52 tablets in one go. If it happened to be the large sized bottle of six plus then there is enough paracetemol in there to give an adult liver damage from an overdose, never mind a two year old.

A 100mL bottle of Calpol infant (available in 200 mL size too), contains enough paracetemol to cause toxicity in a 12 kg child. (That is roughly a 2 yr old).

Fortunately bottles are rarely full to start with, kids are usually not very successful at getting the whole lot into them in one go without major spillage etc, and so whilst single incidents like this are likely to give legitimate cause for concern to both parents and doctors serious outcomes are uncommon. However if the child has been taking calpol all day (or for a few days) for some underlying condition then their ability to metabolise the overdose is further affected.

However, IMHO, the bigger problem is parents assuming that “its just paracetemol” and “there’s barely any in there” and so giving repeated low level doses over prolonged periods of time, too close together etc.

What poly, Drac and DrP said.

Paracetamol is considerably more dangerous than people generally give it credit for.

There seems to be a general belief that they are “just little headache pills” and taking a few extra if you are in “real” pain won’t do any harm.

It takes surprisingly few paracetamol tablets to seriously damage your liver.

So glad the OP’s little un is okay. I have to admit I went and checked where our Calpol bottle was after reading that. Scary times!

Phew – great to hear that everything’s ok.

Having done research work on paracetemol at overdose levels, i can only conclude that its a horrible, horrible ending.

its remarkable that its still so freely available.

yeah, it’s not said enough – safe in normal doses, bloody dangerous in overdose IF LEFT WITHOUT TREATMENT

however also worth bearing in mind that 80% or so of overdose deaths are from prescription medicines
(paracetamol is under 10%, even when includes multiple drug overdoses and combination products like co-proxamol/co-codamol where the para contribution may not have been the fatal bit)

scaredypants – that’s an interesting statistic. Presumably a large %age of ‘overdose deaths’ were the intended outcome of the patient? Wonder what %age of accidental overdosing is paracetemol related?

****, I hope all is ok. Seriously ****. 🙁

DrP, would forcing your kid to drink something that would make them sick help mitigate/reduce the damage?

I know its sodium/salt which isn’t good for children but how about warm salty water? Anything else that make someone vomit quickly?

Or just fingers down throat until the gagging reflex kicks in?

Glad Jnr is ok, but to be fair it wouldnt have been my first idea to post on a forum when I know I could have a very sick chold on my hands.

“Having done research work on paracetemol at overdose levels, i can only conclude that its a horrible, horrible ending.

its remarkable that its still so freely available.”

Yeah Mrs FD was saying its not a great way to kill yourself quickly, and that generally alot of the serious contenders research it a bit these days, the power of google and all, and its less in favour than it used to be.

IMO doesnt make any difference if its available or not, if you want to kill yourself you will will find some way of doing it regardless.

DO NOT MAKE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TAKEN OVERDOSES VOMIT!

Ah ok. Why?