Mommy, I ate a blueberry

Last Friday, we were having pizza in the backyard of our friends Eric and Clara when Rex informed me that he had eaten a "blueberry."  That was cause for alarm as there are no blueberries in their yard.  He took me to the plant in question and, sure enough, it had dark purple berries on it, as well as unripe green ones.  Trying not to panic, I took some samples and immediately called my sister-in-law Anna, the ecologist, for help identifying the plant.  Unbelievably, she figured it out in about 5 minutes from my over-the-phone description and Google.  She guessed that it was an ornamental plant called Lantana camara.   I called up the plant on Google and she was spot on. Of course, it's very toxic, particularly the green, unripe berries.  So, I had to call poison control.  I feel like I call them a lot about Mr. Rex (most recently about a tube of cortisone cream he had squirted out all over my bed).    

They told me that it was toxic, but that there was no established toxicity level.  It had a whole host of horrible symptoms associated with it - all bad with death being a possibility.  They told me that I could wait to see if he developed symptoms in 2.5-6 hours or I could take him into the ER where they would try and soak up the poison with charcoal.  If we waited for symptoms, then all they could do was treat them.  Since we didn't know how much or little he'd ingested, we opted for the immediate trip to the Children's Hospital.  

It was unbelievable easy and pleasant in that ER.  We were seen right away by super friendly doctors and nurses.  Rex was all smiles, so everyone was relieved and calm.  The only problem was that he was going to have to get the charcoal treatment.  Since little kids don't want to drink a large glass of something so horrible, they generally run a tube through their nose and down to their stomach to force the charcoal in - yuck!  We all got suited up b/c the procedure can get messy with charcoal spraying everywhere.  Then they asked us if he might drink/eat it with chocolate ice cream.  We said, "maybe."  Then, in a sequence of events that I can't recall clearly, while someone went in search of the ice cream, someone asked Rex if he would drink the charcoal in order to get ice cream.  We all stood there in complete shock as Rex calmly took the giant cup and started chugging down what can best be described as gritty black tar - see picture below.  Then, of course, he wanted his chocolate ice cream, which they promptly gave him.   They then held us for a couple of hours to monitor Rex, whose heart rate was elevated.  We came home around 11:30 p.m. and Rex has been fine ever since.