Fire in the Mouth Hole

Calling Poison Control was not in my plans, yet here I am.

People rarely use rubbing alcohol yet everyone keeps a bottle, typically in the back of a medicine cabinet or under a sink. Yours is probably covered in a layer of dust to rival the ruins of Pompeii, with a label that was printed in a font discontinued when laser printers were invented. That's the way of domestic afterthoughts.

Several years ago the bottle I was probably gifted at my christening ran out, and I moseyed up to Target to buy another dusty, leftover bottle from the bottom shelf of the health and beauty aisles. As soon as I got it home, that brittle plastic bottle gave up the ghost and began leaking from its side seam. It threatened to ruin the other forgotten things buried in my linen closet, like the rectal thermometer from when my kids were babies (RECTAL written on it in permanent marker), a pair of eyeglasses missing one screw, and a set of hot rollers that survived the 2001 flash-flood of La Nana Creek which I inexplicably cleaned and saved but have never used since then. I don't even remember why I bought them in the first place. 

I needed to transfer the rubbing alcohol out of its original bottle, so I poured it into an empty water bottle. Then I removed the label and printed RUBBING ALCOHOL in capital letters with a black permanent marker so I'd know it was not water despite any pretenses. It's been hanging out in the upstairs closet for years, just waiting for a mistake. 

Almost, but not quite

This year Santa gifted my daughter a 10-pack of mini nail polish. The day after Christmas we painted her nails in alternating shades of red and silver glitter, which looked festive at first but immediately peeled when her hands got wet. By bath time that night, she was removing an entire nail of polish at a time, perfectly intact. Sparkly red squares floated next to Barbie in the tub. Nobody was happy.

The search engines tell me this happens when polish doesn't adhere properly to the nail bed. Google recommended thoroughly washing hands before applying polish, or swiping the nail with rubbing alcohol to ready it for lacquer. I made a mental note, next to my thousands of other mental notes.

The day before New Year's Eve, as I juggled the things typical of a work-from-home mom with two kids on school vacation, my daughter reminded me I had promised to repaint her nails. So I fetched the bottle marked RUBBING ALCOHOL from the upstairs closet, cleaned each small fingernail with a square of toilet paper moistened with the smelly stuff, and brushed on the first layer of polish. 

Then I remembered I had to upload a blog post and schedule an email blast for my paying job, so I worked on that while her first coat dried. She came in my home office asking when I would finish painting her nails, and I said as soon as I was done working. Which is exactly what I did, multi-tasker that I am. 

Feeling pretty accomplished about both my work life and momming skills, I sat at the breakfast table and reached for a sip of water from my regular water bottle, the one I refill regularly with refreshing filtered water. A few thoughts came in quick succession.

First, I must have left more water in here than I thought.

Second, just as I was bringing the bottle to my lips, wow my hands still smell a lot like rubbing alcohol. 

I pour liquid into my mouth and I suddenly feel like I was french-kissing a blowtorch. Then, clarity: I have grabbed the wrong bottle and taken a swig of rubbing alcohol.

My mouth sends a SOS to my brain that says MAYDAY MAYDAY THIS IS NOT WATER CLOSING THE EMERGENCY HATCHES and my throat starts to involuntarily shut, but a small sip of rubbing alcohol escapes down first.

The world is on fire. My throat burns at the back of my head and the base of my neck. I take a running leap toward the kitchen sink, spit out what's left in my mouth and begun sucking tap water straight from the faucet to rinse the fire water off my delicate mucous membranes. 

My daughter starts laughing and pointing at me, saying to her brother, "Look, momma's drinking from the sink! Isn't that funny?"

It is not.

Mouth still aflame, I grab my phone and Google something incoherent like "accident swallow rubbing alcohol" because I want the algorithms to know this definitely was not on purpose and I'm not stupid. I swear. 

Despite my efforts, I'm treated to a bunch of websites calling out my obvious alcoholism, because no level-headed, non-addicted person would put rubbing alcohol into her mouth. Clearly I was compelled to do this because of an uncontrollable need for any kind of alcohol at all. 

Suddenly I remember a scene from Family Ties where Steven's brother, played by an impossibly young Tom Hanks, chugs the vanilla extract from Elyse's kitchen because he's going through the DTs. I also remember I tried tasting vanilla extract once as a child because it smelled good, but it tasted like being punched in the mouth. Meanwhile my eyes are watering and my stomach feels like I've eaten a dozen ghost peppers and I wonder what Michael J. Fox is up to these days. 

I snap out of my reverie long enough to find a website that tells me I might begin to feel very drunk from the alcohol in rubbing alcohol because it is absorbed faster, but do not induce vomiting because of the caustic nature of the liquid. 

My mouth, stomach, and throat agree with this assessment. My brain wonders if I need to call my husband at work because I will be too drunk on rubbing alcohol to properly parent. I'm not quite sure how to explain this to him.

But also, how do I stop the burning and am I going to die? I briefly picture a relaxing stay in a hospital bed while someone else cooks my meals and cleans my bathroom, and think maybe that's not so bad after all. Maybe I should just let the rubbing alcohol take me wherever it wants. 

At the end of this article on alcoholism I find a number for poison control, and I reluctantly plug it into my phone. 

There must be a lot of people accidentally swallowing dangerous substances on New Year's Eve Eve because I am put on hold - which seems like a bad feature for a life-saving hotline where time is of the priority. Also, there is no hold music to keep me entertained while I ponder inevitable death. I'm not actually certain whether I'm still on hold or got disconnected, and I have to check my phone a few times to make sure I continue to wait in purgatory. 

All of this seems like a metaphor. For what, I don't really know.

Hurry up and wait

Eventually Melissa answers, to my relief, and I recap the humiliating situation - I have accidentally swallowed rubbing alcohol. Melissa kindly asks how it happened, and I wonder why that matters. Shouldn't the how part be secondary to the life-saving part? Is she going to tell her friends this story? I know from experience that police, EMTs, and ER personnel are fun at parties because they share the best "you'll never believe what this person did" stories. 

Melissa doesn't even laugh when I tell her I used a water bottle to store rubbing alcohol and inadvertently sipped from it while distracted by self-congratulations for juggling motherhood and career. Was it isopropyl alcohol or ethyl alcohol, she asks. I have no idea - the label is long gone and I neglected to write exactly what sort of rubbing alcohol on the makeshift bottle since I didn't intend on ingesting it. Silly details.

She tells me drinking from the wrong bottle is a pretty common mistake when people reuse water bottles, and we let the "like idiots" part pass between us silently. 

Melissa kindly informs me that the irritation in my mouth, throat, and stomach will likely be temporary and I'll be fine. Death is not coming for me, today at least. I don't need to swallow activated charcoal or make a small animal sacrifice to the surgical spirit gods, just wait it out. Before I hang up I fight back the urge to add "tell your friends."

Obviously I need to up my marking game on the rectal thermometer, lest I have to call the health department and explain another unfortunate mishap.