A seven-year-old girl accidentally overdosed on her mom’s GLP-1 medication, as her family revealed that God 'protected us’ that day.
GLP-1 medications like Ozempic or Mounjaro have been increasing in demand for years now due to their ability to help people shed weight.
You can get many forms to help on your weight loss journey, from a licensed drug to help people manage Type-2 diabetes, to others that are expressly prescribed to aid in weight loss.
While there is usually a strict criterion of weight, age, and health, prior to prescription, that doesn’t always stop children from being able to get their hands on the drugs.
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Jessa Milender, from Indiana, told WHAS-11 how she was able to inject herself with her mom’s GLP-1 injector pen back in December 2024, as her mother revealed the rush to save her life just moments later.
“I thought it was stomach medicine,” Jessa, now eight, admitted.
The school girl had injected herself with 60 percent of a pre-filled GLP-1 injector pen, causing her to pass out from vomiting and dehydration due to the overdose.
Her mom, Melissa, shared she called the poison center immediately after realizing Jessa had injected herself, which very well may have saved her life.
“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.”
Jessa was rushed to the ER, where she was placed on an IV drip, but once her symptoms subsided and she was discharged, things got worse.
“I should have never let them discharge her,” Melissa told the outlet, revealing how Jessa needed to be carried to the bathroom as she was too weak to walk.
The mom added: “She was thirsty. That's the only thing that she wanted to do was drink water, but then she would throw it up.”
The young girl admitted she believed the GLP-1 would help with stomach pain, as ‘my mom takes it and I thought it helped her with her stomachaches’. But in the aftermath of her overdose, Jessa was taken back to the hospital, as her mom was worried; she had stopped urinating, a sign of dehydration.
There, doctors were worried about possible kidney failure.
“She didn’t eat for six days straight” Melissa added, says, sharing how the family was ‘gathered around her, because she was just laying there, like, lifeless.’
Thankfully, Jessa was able to make a full recovery and over one year later, she was smiling in her interview about the ordeal.
But the horror still impacts Melissa, who immediately took preventative measures to stop this from happening again, by keeping the medication locked in a box she bought the day of the overdose.
Maryann Amirshahi, PharmD, MD, MPH, co-medical director at the National Capital Poison Center in Washington, DC, told Verywell Health that the most common signs of a GLP-1 overdose include:
- Multiple episodes of vomiting
- Blood in the vomit
- Not keeping food or drink down
- Severe or persistent abdominal pain
When in doubt, call poison control or if you or a loved one begins to struggle to breathe or loses consciousness, call 911.
Britt Jones