Alive & Aware THANKFULLY

The Burke house was put under a little stress this last weekend. Due to some faulty work performed on our furnace/air conditioner, carbon monoxide was being pumped into our home. It started out like a normal weekend. If you consider normal running around like mini demons with lots of estrogen. Normal for us anyway. Saturday evening I turned on our heater for the first time this season. I noticed an odor but thought that maybe it was just the unit burning off dust. I went to bed with a bad headache but managed to fall asleep. The next morning, I could barely open my eyes. Izzy was complaining of a headache as well. Then the nausea started in and she and I were sharing the throw up bowl. When Cam Cam finally got up, she started throwing up as well. It was odd that all of us were sick at the same time but I had had dinner with Paula the night before, so I texted her to see if her kids were sick because I thought food poisoning might be the culprit. She was fine except for a headache left over from my house the night before. Odd? Yes! I finally got to the point where I just wanted to lay down and go to sleep. But the girls were sick too, so I couldn't. We were all in so much pain that none of us could move. Cam Cam would fall asleep mid crawl and not move until I would wake her up. She would then resume crawling and again fall asleep mid crawl. Being that I really am an orphan, I called my Grandma out of church. And she made it to Idaho Falls from Ashton in 45 minutes. When she arrived, she had to knock on the door because it was still locked. I have a 5lbs chihuahua with a bladder the size of a peanut. I couldn't figure out why I hadn't let him out for the morning. Then everything started to click. Gordy wasn't even moving. The girls and I threw up together, every time the furnace kicked on. I grabbed my kids and Bev drove us to the doctor. Even being out in the fresh air for 10 minutes made Izzy and Cam perk up. My headache started going away. The doctor examined us and determined that we were being poisoned by carbon monoxide. When the gas company came to check out the house, they found 25,000 ppm of carbon monoxide in our house and that was after the doors and window had been opened for over an hour and the furnace was off. The gas man kept saying over and over again. "Thank goodness you called. Thank goodness you got out of the house. This is so dangerous." It turned out that the return air vent had been removed and not replaced. So when the furnace kicked on, it was venting carbon monoxide right into our house. Cam Cam had to go on supplemental oxyagen for a little bit but other than that, we are back to normal.

First Call Jewel, you were worth the $483 to fix our furnance properly. Thank you.