LEAD POISONING: DIAGNOSES AND RECOVERY

“That is when all of the red flags went off. The state was notified because his blood levels were so high because he had been poisoned, the nurses were notified, the school and everybody, because his blood level was at an 86.”

Lisa Thompson (Names have been changed for unrelated safety reasons) discovered her son, John, had lead poisoning during a routine checkup when he was three.

As of 2007, Iowa mandated all children enrolled in school be tested. Other states, such as Illinois, have similar laws.

Lisa had sold her house and was living with her mother to get some extra help raising her children. Lisa’s mother lives in Rock Island, which, like most river towns, has a high proportion of older houses, her mother’s home being among them.

Lead has a naturally sweet taste and was mixed with paint to give it a more vibrant color. Lead paint wasn’t banned from use in homes until 1978. Residents often do not realize their home contains lead until someone in their household is diagnosed with lead poisoning. Exposure happens in many ways, the most common being ingestion.

“I didn’t know that lead tasted sweet... like living in a house full of candy.”

“We noticed him eating the wood, but we just thought, ‘Oh he’s just a little kid, they chew on it,’” Lisa said.  “It had never occurred to us that there was lead in this house, because me and my brother actually grew up in the house.”

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John’s bed frame with teeth marks. While this frame doesn’t contain lead, John had already been conditioned to chew on furniture at grandma’s house. October 8th, 2016.

Once Lisa realized her mother’s house had lead, she and John moved to an apartment in Davenport. “Because grandma's house is dangerous.”

This is when Scott County got involved.

“When we find a lead poisoned child, we meet right away with the family and go over all the medical aspects.”  Scott County Public Health Nurse, Lorna Bimm said.

This includes a focused diet on high iron and calcium as well as lots of fluids to help remove the lead from the body. In extreme cases, chelation therapy is needed.

Chelation therapy is a treatment used to remove lead from the bloodstream.  It uses a chemical that binds to the lead so it can be removed through urination. The chemical is injected into the bloodstream through an IV.

It is a very specialized procedure, and not just any doctor can do it. Within the Scott County area, there is one pediatrician who is trained to treat lead poisoning with chelation therapy.

Due to his high blood levels, John was hospitalized for week while he went through chelation therapy.  

“They put the IV with the medication in his arm and ran the medication all night long. In the morning, they would take out the IV and just let him run around and play. He was really active at the hospital because he wasn’t showing any symptoms, which is why we didn’t know he had lead poisoning.

“His blood level was so high he should have been in an almost catatonic state, like a zombie, and that never happened to him. He’s always been very active and bouncing off the walls, so I would have never known anything was wrong with him. The doctors at the hospital were shocked, like, ‘This kid has lead poisoning?’”

After a week of chelation therapy, John had a blood level of 55.  Still “entirely too high” according to Lisa and the medical community. Once released from the hospital, John was put on oral chelation medication to further lower his blood level.

“I would open up the pill and I would mix it with lime gatorade, he likes lime gatorade, anyway, I would suck it up into a syringe and give it to him that way. I would tell him, “Buddy we have to take it like this otherwise we have to go back to the hospital and they will have to give you needles again.”

It’s been almost a year since John’s first blood test. He most recently tested a blood level of 18. Lisa is still understandably concerned for her son, but things seem to be going well.

Looking back, Lisa is aware of how much danger her son was in. Children with similar blood levels sometimes end up in comas.

“The thing is, my son drinks a lot of milk... an abnormal amount of milk, and I started thinking, maybe all of that milk saved his life. Lead comes out of your system through the urine, and since he would drink like a gallon of milk in two days, I began to wonder if that's what saved his life.”