thefrizzle.com

Posted by Mad Francis in news/blog

Today has proven to be one of the most chaotic weekday that I’ve had in a very long time.

First off all, the whole ordeal started with a late night. I didn’t end up getting to bed until around 3AM which would have allowed me plenty of time to sleep before my 11AM class. However, instead of sleeping until 10:20 I was woken up at 7AM by the Carbon Monoxide Detector in my hallway. I stumbled out of bed to see what all the noise was about and the alarm was reading 276 parts per billion. I had no idea what this meant so I was quick to grab my laptop and figure out what the safe levels of carbon monoxide were. I checked out the site of the company that made our detector and read their figures. The website said that 250 parts per billion was dangerous and that we needed to get to fresh air immediately. I closed my laptop and rushed to oepn all of the windows and doors while simultaneously waking up Lauren and telling her that we had to evacuate the apartment. I threw my laptop into a backpack and we left with the quickness.

I wasn’t feeling very hot and I couldn’t tell whether my symptoms were due to a lack of sleep OR exposure to carbon monoxide. I called our landlord and informed him about the situation. He told me that he was at the hospital because his wife had just had back surgery and that he could be at our apartment in an hour. During that hour I took Lauren to her parent’s house and then stopped by my dad’s to scour the internet over what to do in this type of situation; I’ve never dealt with carbon monoxide before. Most of the website said that exposure to carbon monoxide would result in headaches but I didn’t have one so I was confused. It was at this time that my landlord called and told me that he was downtown.

When I arrived at my apartment I met with my landlord and explained the situation. I told him that our detector had been going off. We tried plugging the detector into multiple outlets in every room of the apartment. The readings were consistent so we evacuated to the balcony to devise a plan. He ended up having some friend that worked for T.J. Environmental Systems so he gave them a call. They said that they would be sending someone out immediately to check the premises. I didn’t now how long that was going to take so I drove back to my dad’s house to do some more reading online. All of the websites were saying that I should consult a doctor if I had been exposed to carbon monoxide so I called my family doctor. The doctor told me that I should go to the emergency room and get checked out just to be safe. LAME! I called Lauren and told her what my doctor had said and that I was going to pick her up to go to the ER.

Lauren and I were admitted to the ER around 10:30AM and sat in the waiting room for about 30 minutes before we were called in to room # E-11. The nurses came in and asked us the typical ER questions regarding height, weight, and etc. When they were finished asking their questions they told us that the doctor would be with us shortly and then closed our curtain. While we were waiting for the doctor to arrive I received a call from my landlord informing me that the guy from T.J. Environmental Systems believes that my Carbon Monoxide detector was not functioning properly. Apparently they had taken it into multiple areas that also had C02 detectors and ours was going off while the others were not. Just to be sure, the landlord and the TJ Environmental Systems guy went out and purchased a brand new CO2 detector of the same make and took it back to our apartment for further testing. The new detector showed zero parts per billion and proved that our detector was faulty. Once I heard this I immediately got out of my ER gown and put on my clothes and headed to the front desk to let the nurses know the news. They had me fill out an ADA form to show that I was leaving without treatment and that I wasn’t to be charged.

So basically… The moral of this story is that Carbon Monoxide Detectors need to be changed out every two years so that this whole situation can be avoided.

Suck.