I'm going to hell.

Some of these cracked me up.

Colo. turns poison into profit

'A cat is racing around a woman's home, crazy from swallowing its owner's attention-deficit disorder medicine.

Mushrooms are growing from a carpet flooded in a plumbing disaster.

Tiny high-heeled shoes, glued to a man's feet by an angry girlfriend while he slept, can't be removed and are beginning to shut down his circulation.

Those are some of the weirder calls that come into the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center - the nation's busiest.

Most of the time, however, the center's nurses and pharmacists are guiding anxious parents in flushing foreign substances from a child's eye or directing people to the nearest emergency rooms for critical care.

"It's crazy. You never know what to expect," said nurse Alyssa Guttenberg, 38. "I love it here."

The center, run by Denver Health, fields about 220,000 calls a year from five states and more than 70 manufacturers of products such as Clorox, said Richard Dart, the center's director.

For Denver Health, which operates on a $432 million budget, the center turns a profit of $2 million to $3 million annually.

"We're one small part of the Denver Health operation, but we are a part that makes money," Dart said. Denver Health is the city's safety-net hospital for the poor and uninsured. "Although Denver Health has been in the black now going on 15 years, some years we're in the black by about $2 million," Dart said.

Almost 4 million people in the U.S. had a poisoning episode in 2001, according to the Institute of Medicine, and 31,000 of them died - up 56 percent from 1990.

In a 2004 study, the institute said the nation lacked a comprehensive system for dealing with poison prevention and control, and it fretted about the shaky financial footing of most of the nation's roughly 60 poison control centers.

In the Denver center's office on a recent day, nurses and pharmacists sat in front of computer screens, typing and talking swiftly.

Overheard snatches of conversation give a sense of the operation - and the trappings of American life.

"Was the baby wipe the child swallowed scented?"

"You're positive it was bleach, nothing else?"

"What that chemical does is break down the exoskeleton of the roach."

Calls come in so quickly at times, 10 nurses can't pick them all up on the first ring. A strobe signals waiting callers by splashing white light around the cubicle-filled room.

Panicking parents

Patrice Hartman-Evans, 51, who has worked at the center for 18 years, quickly finished a call with a Colorado resident whose cat ate a person's pill. She then grabbed a call from Idaho. "You feel very comfortable they only got at those?" she asked a panicking parent whose toddlers had rummaged through Grandma's pill minder.

"Then they should be just fine," Hartman-Evans reassured, "but let me check the numbers."

Once, she picked up a call from a pilot, midflight, concerned about a leaky pesticide can placed in an overhead compartment. A few passengers felt lightheaded.

"He wanted to know if he should land right away," Hartman-Evans said. "I asked, 'What, in the nearest cornfield?"'

With a computerized database and answers to a few questions - no one on board was asthmatic or elderly - Hartman-Evans figured that the chemical's marginal toxicity was safer than an emergency landing.

She had the pilot increase fresh-air flow to the cabin for the rest of the flight.

Not all calls end successfully.

The mother of a 14-year-old called earlier this year, the day after the girl took too much of an over-the-counter painkiller in a suicide attempt.

"The girl had been vomiting, so the mom thought that cleaned out her system. It doesn't," Hartman-Evans said.

She sent them to an emergency room - she can't say where - and later learned the child died.

"My daughter is 14," Hartman- Evans said.

At a neighboring desk, a nurse explained to two consecutive callers that vomiting - self-induced or with syrup of Ipecac - is now discouraged.

"No, no, we don't have them throw up anymore," the nurse told one caller. "We don't give Ipecac. Vomiting only empties one-third of the stomach."

Denver's center serves Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada and Montana, said managing director Kathy Wruk.

The state of Nevada signed up this summer. When Hawaii came on about six years ago, Wruk and her colleagues prepared for the transition by researching marine toxins. "We imagined box jellyfish," Wruk said.

The breakdown of Hawaii calls turned out to be remarkably similar to those in Colorado - and across the nation, in fact.

Problems with pain relievers, cleaning substances and cosmetics usually top the lists. Then, in varying order, come cough preparations; foreign bodies, including toy parts; topical preparations; sedatives and other mental-health drugs; and bites and stings.

Wruk said children get into whatever they can - cosmetics on the counter, cleaners under the sink. "When the day is done, kids are kids," she said.

Adults, on the other hand, can be surprisingly inventive, said the center's education director, Mary Hilko.

It was Hilko who took the call from the man glued into high heels.

"Part of you wonders, was this a real call? You have to assume it was," Hilko said. "I told him, for adhesives, we usually recommend oils."

The center's recommendations for quick action can limit injuries. A person who splashes a toxic substance into his eye, for example, often does better to flush it with cold water for 20 minutes than to drive to a hospital.

"In the 20 minutes it takes to get there, the damage would have been done," Wruk said.

Many calls are for information only, such as the one Guttenberg recently took.

"Hang on one moment," she said, punching a hold button and turning to Hilko, who was standing nearby.

"Have you ever heard of mushrooms growing out of carpets in a house?" Guttenberg asked.

After a short discussion, Guttenberg returned to the caller and recommended a plumber, professional dehumidifying and possibly replacing the carpet, which could harbor spores.

Earlier that day, she guided the parent of a 22-month-old in California to an emergency room in Fresno. The call came to Denver because the parent used a cellphone with a Hawaii area code.

"The child ate adult decongestants," Guttenberg said. "That's bad. It can do cardiac stuff, increase the heart rate. ... The child was vomiting."

A few years ago, Guttenberg said she got a call from a man who used lead-based solder to try to reattach his dreadlocks - and only later considered the danger of lead poisoning.

"It's always interesting," said Hartman-Evans. "You never have to doubt that your work is important."'