A Houston-area woman is warning others that if they see a napkin stuffed into a door handle of their car, leave it alone.
She did not and paid the price with a trip to the hospital after an episode that appeared to be poisoning, according to KRIV.
Last Tuesday, Erin Mims and her husband were eating at a Houston restaurant. When they came out, a napkin was stuffed in the passenger’s door handle.
“I didn’t think nothing of it. I just threw it out,” Mims said. “I opened the door with the tips of my fingers. I asked my husband, did you put a napkin in the door? And he said no.”
To be safe, Mims went back in the restaurant to wash her hands. After they drove away, the fingers she used to open the car door started tingling. It soon got worse.
“Maybe five minutes, my whole arm started tingling and feeling numb. I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “I started getting hot flashes, my chest was hurting, my heart was beating really fast.”
Her husband drove her to a hospital where urine samples, blood tests and a CAT scan were performed.
“They said my vitals were all over the place,” she said, noting that her doctor said the scenario sounded like a failed kidnapping.
“I was there for about six and a half hours,” Mims said, according to the Daily Mail. “The doctor said I had acute poisoning from an unknown substance. I didn’t have enough of it in my system to determine what it was, but just that little amount had me messed up.”
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“So just imagine if I would’ve wrapped it with my whole hand, I probably could’ve been dead,” she said.
“All I could do was think about my babies. It was the scariest moment of my life,” Mims said, KRIV reported.
When she posted her story on social media the reaction was, well, typical of social media. Suggestions were made that the self-professed germophobe had a panic attack.
“I read some of the comments. I don’t care what people think,” Mims said. “I just want them to know what happened. When they see that napkin, in their head they’re going to know not to touch it. I just want everybody to be careful. Physically, I’m OK, but emotionally, mentally, I’m not. I don’t even want to go anywhere by myself.”
Erin Mims said she started experiencing hot flashes, chest pains and a racing heart after touching a napkin found in her door handle that sent her to the emergency room. The doctor says it may have been a bait for kidnapping.
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Mims, who owns a hair salon, filed a report with the Houston police, who said the case was unique.
Poison control expert Mark Winter of the Southeast Houston Poison Center said the substance she came in contact with could be any one of a vast array of poisonous substances.
“The probability is that you would have to have a lot more than just a casual exposure,” Winter said.
Mims’s symptoms “match hundreds of different poisons.”
“It is possible. I’ve learned over my 40 years, that anything is possible when it comes to the human body,” he said.
