‘I could barely talk and I could barely breath’
A woman has claimed that she nearly died after picking a $1 bill up from the floor because it had been covered in drugs.
Renee Parson from Kentucky said she went numb and was rushed to hospital after picking up a single discarded note.
The US mum was at McDonald’s with her husband and daughter when the incident took place.
Posting on Facebook, she said: “We stopped at McDonald’s and while I stand with my 3 month old baby, and wait for my husband so I could go to the bathroom, I see a dollar bill on the ground.
“Thinking absolutely nothing of it – I picked it up. Holding it in my hand I look around and contemplate giving it to the little girl I saw. Right then my husband comes out of the bathroom and I throw the dollar in my pocket, hand him the baby, run to the bathroom. I wash my hands and I don’t dry them all the way. I go out to meet them and start to walk to the car a minute or so later.”
Parson detailed how she then got the dollar out of her pocket and told her husband how lucky she was to find it. However in that moment she quickly grabbed a wipe to clean her hands, as she remembered her husband had told her not to pick up money off the ground, “as people put it in fentanyl”.
Fentanyl is a strong opioid painkiller that is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. It can be deadly if too much is used, and has been the cause of a spike in overdoses in the US.
Last year, over 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in just 12 months, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found, with around two-thirds linked to fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. Earlier this year, two men in South California were busted with enough fentanyl to kill 4.7 million people.
Parson said: “As [my husband] began to somewhat lecture me, it hit me like a ton of bricks. All of a sudden I felt it start in my shoulders and the feeling was quickly going down my body and it would not stop.
“I said, ‘Justin, please help me. Im not kidding I feel really funny.’ I grab his arm not thinking and then my body went completely numb, I could barely talk and I could barely breath. I was fighting to stay awake as Justin was screaming at me to stay awake and trying to talk to 911 and find the closest Fire Station or Hospital. I passed out before we arrived at the hospital, but thankfully they worked almost as quickly as my husband did to get me there.”
Parson said she was in hospital for several hours but after being given the correct medication, she started to feel “somewhat normal again”.
She claimed a police officer put the incident down to one of two things – the dollar bill had been used to cut or store drugs and was accidentally dropped, or it was purposely dropped with drugs on it.
“Either way, this is absolutely real and sad,” Renee said, “The mixture of my wet hands and the alcohol from the wipes, mixed with my bodies reaction to that drug could of cost me my life.”
Some have been sceptical about whether this incident could have possibly happened but it was only in June that a Tennessee sheriff’s office warned that folded dollar bills containing fentanyl had been found in two separate incidents.
“This is a very dangerous issue!” the Giles County Sheriff’s Department warned in a Facebook post. “Please share and educate your children to not pick up any folded money they may find in or around businesses, playgrounds, etc., without using great caution and even alerting a parent or guardian.”
“I don’t care if it’s a $20 bill or a $100 bill do not touch it!” Parson added.
Related links:
- Man dies after downing bottle of Jagermeister in under two minutes
- Two men busted with enough fentanyl to kill 4.7 million people
- Police officers ‘photographed and manipulated body of suicide victim’
