Our daughter, Maisie, died after ingesting a methadone tablet at a neighbor’s home that was on the ground. Six adults, three of them medical doctors, had been together with her your complete night. Nonetheless, the small white tablet 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 lifeless from an overdose the next morning.

Screams, tears, paramedics, coronary heart breaking cellphone calls, funeral providers, 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 dying ought to by no means have occurred.

Finally, Maisie’s tragic dying 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 got unfold her story and legacy to whomever will pay attention through native information, the entrance web page of USA At present, podcasts, well being organizations, advocacy teams, and with the federal government at each native and federal ranges with one aim: We don’t need there to be any extra households with our expertise. We wish adjustments in habits, packaging, and practices so no households endure like ours and there aren’t any funerals for an pointless sufferer of the opioid epidemic.

Sadly, poisonings of youngsters, like Maisie, usually are not unusual. Roughly 35,000 younger youngsters are delivered to the emergency room every year as a result of they bought into medicines that had been left inside attain. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority usually are not life threatening – however youngsters proceed to seek out substances they need to not have entry to.

What are you able to do to maintain your family members protected? Hold medicines, nutritional vitamins, and different dietary supplements (together with gummies) “up and away” in a spot the place younger youngsters can not see or attain them. To assist defend your youngsters or grandchildren:

• hold all medicines in a child-resistant container with the security cap locked – many different containers, corresponding to tablet containers, usually are not and might be simply opened by youngsters.
• hold medicines up and away and out of sight and attain of younger youngsters, like in a excessive cupboard or on a excessive closet shelf.
• by no means depart unfastened drugs out on a counter or desk – hold drugs in child-resistant containers till proper earlier than you are taking them.

It’s simple for drugs to fall on the ground and roll out of sight the place younger youngsters might discover them. Take time to comb or vacuum the ground if youngsters can be visiting. If you’re touring, both with younger youngsters or to go to them, be sure you pack your medicines in child-resistant containers. In case you’re staying in a resort, you possibly can put medicines within the resort room protected or on a excessive shelf within the closet.

Past your day after day, you can too promote unit of use packaging (e.g., blister packs) for medication which can be recognized to be deadly in small quantities. Unit of use packaging permits the particular person taking the medicine to solely entry one tablet at a time and helps to maintain medicine out of youngsters’s attain.

One tablet can kill. Little one-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 drugs safer for everybody. We don’t get to boost Maisie, however we’ll all the time be her dad and mom, and supporting and selling protected medicine practices is a technique 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 youngsters: Rhona, Maisie, Conway, and Archie. Adam works for a big client items firm and MaryBeth sits on the board of Camp Stella Maris in Livonia, NY and oversees the Purple Gentle Venture, a fund in Maisie’s reminiscence.