Nicotine Poisoning

Here’s another one for the Oh, look, another stupid thing has happened to Annie file.

Today at Camp Wellstone we were working in our small groups (ironically, as you will see, on a proposed children’s health initiative) and each group was called one by one out of the room to meet with other staffers to present our proposals.

My partner ran to get a diet pepsi as we were working, he saw mine and he wanted one of his own. As we got up to leave our workspace we both grabbed our Pepsi’s and just before I walked into the meeting I took a giant swig of mine.

But it wasn’t diet pepsi, it was tobacco juice.

Some… person had been chewing (oh, lord, I’m going to be sick again) and had been using a diet pepsi bottle as his spittoon. He set it down right next to mine just as we were leaving the room – and I picked it up – the rest is disgusting history. And it’s mostly my fault for being so stupid as to not look (although it DID look a lot like pepsi) and I am ultimately the one responsible.

However, I ingested a great deal of nicotine, and I’ve been sick as a dog, jittery, ill, the whole goya beanery. I was useless for the rest of the conference, spending most of the time in the bathroom, then I recovered enough to drive myself home and collapsed.

After several hours the heart palpitations, jitters, nausea hadn’t abated so I finally called poison control. The very kind woman there suggested the emergency room if I were very dizzy, otherwise there was really nothing that can be done until it passes out of my system.

I feel like a jittery, hepped up and very ill fool.