CORN FLAKES, MILK & NARCAN –
Dec. 4, 2022 – But after a minute, she returned to the bedroom. The noises he was making were disconcerting. And when she shook him, he didn’t respond. Kyle was not asleep. He had overdosed, and the opioids in his bloodstream were blocking his brain’s commands to his body to breathe. He was suffocating.
If you’re a parent of a teen, you may have already read a number of stories like this, terrifying articles about parents discovering their children after an overdose. The articles feature grim photos of the survivors looking into the distance, and are full of dire warnings about how the opioid epidemic has struck families: the athletes who get hooked on medication, the students who buy what they think is one Adderall pill from a guy on Snapchat and drop dead in the front yard. Moms and dads I know pass these stories around helplessly, discuss them in person, turn over and over in their minds every parent’s worst nightmare: a child dead in a moment, due to a single mistake.
This is not that kind of story. That’s because Nichole Causey had, in her kitchen cabinet, a miracle medication called Narcan. She saved Kyle’s life with Narcan, which is simple to administer and works nearly instantly to reverse an opioid overdose.
