A woman in Texas is shaken up after she was rushed to the emergency room for a possible poisoning attempt. Erin ‘Dawn’ Sims and her husband visited a restaurant in northern Houston on Tuesday to celebrate her birthday. They enjoyed a meal before returning to the car to drive to their next destination. Unfortunately, the plans went left after Erin discovered a napkin stuffed into her door handle.
“What started off as a great day turned into being one of the scariest moments of my life,” Erin said.
In a four-minute-long video, Erin explained how she ended up with acute poisoning. During a part of the recording, the 37-year-old showed an example of how the napkin was stuffed. The napkin was sitting in the slit created to pull the handle out and open the door. Erin said she plucked the napkin out of the slit using her lengthy acrylic fingernails. However, she pulled the door handle open using her bare fingertips.
“I’m a slick side germaphobe so normally I wouldn’t touch anything like that. But I did have a margarita and I don’t know…I guess I just thought maybe my husband put it in the door just playing around,” Erin said.
Erin waited until her husband finished a phone call before asking about the napkin. Immediately after her husband confirmed the napkin wasn’t his, Erin searched for and used the hand sanitizer. Erin’s husband attempted to calm her and suggested she go back into the restaurant to wash her hands. Erin said her fingertips started tingling about two minutes after washing her hands. So, to relax, she told herself she was tripping and that the feeling was nothing.
Husband Rushes Erin To ER; Doctors Say It Was An ACute Poisoning
The birthday lady slipped back into the car with her husband. They started driving, and Erin kept the tingling feeling to herself. But after about five minutes of driving, the sensation spread to her entire arm. And the symptoms only worsened from there.
“Then [my arm] started to feel numb. I got light-headed, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I got hot. It just was a whole bunch of different feelings at one time. I started to panic, [my husband] calmed me down. He told me to just calm down, drink some water, just breathe, just breathe.”
Erin complied and took deep breaths as her husband dialed 911. The couple needed help finding the nearest emergency room as they weren’t in a familiar area. At the hospital, Erin explained what had happened. After a brief examination, the medical staff warned Erin that her vitals were not stable. She was placed on fluids and spent the next six and a half hours undergoing multiple tests, including a CAT scan.
“The doctors said I had acute poisoning from an unknown substance,” Erin revealed. “I didn’t have enough of it in my system to determine what it was. But just that little amount had me messed up y’all. So just imagine if I would’ve grabbed it with my full hand, like, I probably could’ve been dead dawg.”
Erin Shares A Warning: “Pay Attention To Your Surroundings”Â
With less than a minute left in the video, Erin was on the verge of tears as she warned viewers to “be careful.” The doctors told Erin the poisoning could’ve been “a possible kidnapping attempt.”Â
“Just for everybody, all the women in Houston…everywhere just be careful when you’re out. Pay attention to your surroundings. Just be careful, be safe.” She later thanked God for her husband’s presence. Erin added, “it got some crazy a** people in the world y’all like I never thought this would happen to me or on my side of town, so it could happen anywhere y’all.”
Erin told The Shade Room the hospital released her but told her to return if she felt worse. She spent Wednesday resting but told TSR she was on her way to file a police report on Thursday morning. Erin claimed she attempted to contact the restaurant owner to obtain parking lot footage but couldn’t reach them. Still, she’s hoping she or the police can access the video soon.
This story is developing. Watch Erin’s full testimony below.
