A Kentucky woman ended up in the hospital with an accidental overdose after picking up a dollar bill on the ground.
Renee Parsons and her husband, Justin, were stopping at a McDonald’s near Nashville, Tennessee Sunday night when she picked up the dollar bill and soon passed out, according to WKRN.
SHERIFFS ISSUE WARNING NOT TO ‘PICK UP ANY FOLDED MONEY’
“She looked like she was dying. She certainly was unconscious and very pale,” Justin Parsons said.
Within minutes of picking up the dollar bill, Renee Parsons began struggling to breathe, and her body went numb.
“I couldn’t even breathe. It’s almost like a burning sensation, if you will, that starts here at your shoulders, and then it just goes down because it’s almost like it’s numbing your entire body,” she explained.
“I grabbed my husband’s arm with the same hand that I had the money in and said, ‘Justin please help me. It won’t stop it’s getting worse,’” she added.
That’s when Justin Parsons began to feel side effects.
“My lips started going numb, and my arm broke out in a rash,” he said.
While his symptoms continued for around one hour, Renee Parsons’s lasted for about four hours before she was released on an accidental overdose.
“I just want people to know because it could have been a child,” she said.
The couple said the toxicology report did not test for synthetic drugs. However, they said they are confident the dollar bill contained fentanyl or a similar drug.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department reportedly did not find grains on the dollar bill but took it to be destroyed.
Dr. Rebecca Donald, an assistant professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at Vanderbilt University, told WSMV that the contaminant likely was not fentanyl based on Renee Parsons’s symptoms.
“It is much more likely for her to have a reaction if she had inadvertently rubbed her nose and exposed that drug to some of the blood vessels in her nose or licked her fingers or rubbed her eyes,” Donald said.
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The incident followed sheriff deputies warning the public about folded dollar bills left on the ground with fentanyl tucked inside.
“This is [a] very dangerous issue!” the Giles County Sheriff’s Department in Tennessee posted on Facebook. “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.”
