Google- You May Have Just Saved My Kids Life

This has been a wild day. Actually pretty normal till around 4:30 PM when I got a phone call from the clinic in town. They were calling me with lab results which was a bit weird since they never have before. According to the nurse, Damien has lead poisioning and needs to come in for another blood draw. The other day they wanted to do a lead screening and after getting the shots I reluctantly said yes although I was SURE I had nothing to worry about. Obviously I was wrong. Come to find out he has high levels of lead in his system. I was shocked. Then came the questions.

Has he been peeling paint off the walls and eating it? Any old paint in the house??
Anyone work with lead that he could have came incontact with?
Has he been acting ok? Showing any symptoms??

By the end of the phone call I was (still am) freaking out. I told her I'd be doing my own Dr's Appointments on Wednesday so I'd bring him in for labs to be done. This time they are going to do a vein draw and it's not going to be fun I can already sense that from the way she was talking about it.

Freaking out, I turned to the computer mainly the best site on this Earth, Google. First I looked up Lead Poisioning in Children since I have no idea what the symptoms are or what lead does to you. Reading down the list of sites that Google posted I came across this one. I thought "what the hell? Paws and Claws library promotion toys have high lead content??" I read the article, got to the bottom and OMG we have 4 of those toys here in our house and Damien was just chewing on one the other day. If anyone remembers we went to several library sessions this summer and our library had a carnival where they gave out animal toys if the kids played their animal games. The kids have had these since mid June. I am absolutely positive this is where the lead poisioning has came from. Unfortunately for me the clinic by 5:30 was closed, the health department closed and the library director is out. I did inform the library what was going on with my kiddo and asked why wasn't anything put in the paper, sent in the mail, etc. She said they just posted a note in the library the other day for patrons. I told her I don't go to the library often so I wouldn't have had any idea! The assistant director is supposed to call me tomorrow.

So then I found that high lead can do fetal damage also depending how much lead you've been in contact with. The article says these have 4 x's the normal amount of lead. Nice. So not only am I going to have the kids all tested, I'm going to get tested myself. These toys have been played with constantly since they got them a few months ago. I just put them in the toy box the other day taking one out of Damien's room. Without Google though, I would have never known about this and I plan to rip the assistant at the library ass to why they haven't put anything in the paper since there must have been 200 kids at the carnival this summer. I was so pissed about this that tonight I got on the treadmill to reduce some stress. Don't think it' worked as I'm still mad as hell. lol