NEED TO KNOW
- An Indiana girl ended up in the hospital after taking her mother’s GLP-1 medication
- Jessa Milender, now 8, injected herself with 60% of her mother’s medication, thinking it eased stomachaches
- Doctors were concerned about kidney failure, her mother, Melissa Milender, tells WHAS-11
A 7-year-old Indiana girl spent days in the hospital after overdosing on her mother’s GLP-1 medication, laying there “lifeless” as her family worried for her life.
“I thought it was stomach medicine,” Jessa Milender, now 8, told WHAS-11 about the December 2024 incident, where she dosed herself with 60% of a prefilled GLP-1 injector pen. “My mom takes it and I thought it helped her with her stomachaches.”
Her mom, Melissa, called the poison center immediately after discovering her daughter had taken the medication — a quick action that may have saved her life. As Verywell Health explains, overdose symptoms include nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain — side effects often associated with GLP-1 medications. Melissa took Jessa to the ER, where she was hooked up to an IV. At that point, her symptoms were dehydration and vomiting.
“I don’t think we were prepared for how bad it was gonna get,” Melissa told the outlet. After Jessa’s symptoms abated, she was discharged — but once she was home, the vomiting came back.
“I should have never let them discharge her,” Melissa told the outlet, sharing that Jessa was so weak she had to carry her to the bathroom. “She was thirsty. That’s the only thing that she wanted to do was drink water, but then she would throw it up.”
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They returned to the hospital, where her mom says she stopped urinating, and doctors were concerned about kidney failure. Melissa tells the outlet she was “100%” concerned for her daughter’s life.
“She didn’t eat for six days straight” she says, sharing that at one point, the family “gathered around her, because she was just laying there, like, lifeless.”
Melissa told the outlet that she now keeps the medication in a locked bax, bought the day Jessa overdosed on her medication. Although she’s now made a full recovery, Melissa shares that she hopes sharing their ordeal can help other parents avoid the same crisis.
“I try not to think about the what if,” she said. “God protected us from the worst, and I firmly believe that. I think it could have been a lot worse.”
Read the full article here
