Home Sweet Home

Sep 14, 2017

Family and Home

This past year, I’ve been hearing more and more about carbon monoxide poisoning. The most recent was an old friend who told me that his best friend had passed away while they were on vacation due to undetected carbon monoxide. To be honest, it’s actually extremely frightening as it’s really hard to detect because it’s colourless and odourless. As with all moms new and seasoned, we try to take the precaution to ensure our home is safe for our kids but sometimes, we just think these things won’t happen to us.  I myself had an incident a couple of years ago when Mike and I were still living in our apartment. It was during the winter months so I had all the windows and patio door closed while I was about to prepare dinner. I turned on the stove to prepare dinner then quickly turned it back off when I figured I had a bit more time to spare however without realizing I didn’t turn the stove off properly.

A short time after, I was really fatigued, started to get a headache and felt a little nauseous but because I’m prone to migraines I didn’t think too much of it (instead, I turned on my Saje diffusor and gave myself a blast of immune). I just thought a headache was on the way and I went to lay down. Mike gets home literally as I was about to pop my head on the pillow for a nap. I told him I was feeling sick and the nausea is starting to get worse. He told me rest and I could hear him grab a chair to put the smoke detector back up. So some context, the night before, Mike had removed the smoke detector from the ceiling because it always causes a ruckus while we try to cook. My smoke detector was super sensitive so pretty much every time we fry anything, it would go off and it would scare the living crap out of Leroy. So this time, we removed it prior to cooking but had forgotten to put it back.

As he plugs it in, the alarm sounds “CO detected” I vividly recall it repeating itself 3 times. Mike started freaking out because he immediately knew why I was feeling sick. He opened all the windows and doors as quickly as possible and brought me and Leroy outside. Luckily I started to feel better but it wasn’t without a scare. After this incident, I made sure we got rid of our crappy detector. Now in our home, our preference is the NEST system (#notsponsored). I just love how you can have it synced up to your mobile device so both Mike and I can keep track of it even when we’re not home.

An old colleague reached out to me earlier this month because she knew that this had happened and told me that we should get our appliances checked annually. WOAH! What does this mean? One of the best ways to keep our home safe and to prevent CO poisoning is to get an annual appliance inspection – something I clearly didn’t know you could do. After this knowledge bomb, I realized that we solely cannot rely on our detectors.

If you live in BC, you can find natural gas contractors who can perform inspections for a small fee. I definitely think it’s worth it because these accidents can happen to anyone. This is a topic close to heart and I wanted to take a moment to share my personal story and some new knowledge I recently learned with you.


This post is sponsored by The Community Against Preventable Injuries and FortisBC

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