A woman has claimed she was hospitalized after picking up a $1 bill she found on the ground, before falling severely ill.
Most people, if they see money lying on the ground, would instinctually pick it up, even if it was just a dollar or two.
However, in some cultures, there are superstitions about taking money that isn’t rightfully your own, which suggest it would be better to leave it well alone.
One woman claims that picking up a dollar bill left her hospitalized after she alleged it was laced with fentanyl.
The woman claimed a dollar bill was laced with fentanyl and left her in hospital. Credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Renee Parsons, from Lextington, Kentucky, picked up a dollar bill outside of a McDonald’s in Nashville in 2022, but soon found herself feeling very unwell.
She and her husband Justin, had been on their way to a work conference in Dallas with two of their children when they decided to stop at a McDonald’s for some food.
Renee told WSMV: “As I was walking inside, there was a dollar on the floor just hanging out, so I picked it up, not thinking anything of it.”
However, her lucky find soon turned unlucky as within 10 minutes of picking up the cash, she claims her body started to go numb and she was barely able to talk or breathe before she passed out.
Explaining how she felt, Renee added: “It is like your body is just shutting down.”
Jason told the publication: “She hadn’t said anything for a while, then she said, ‘Justin, I am sorry. I love you.’ Then she just quit talking.”
The family drove to St. Thomas Ascension Hospital to get help, where paperwork claimed Renee had an accidental drug overdose, which she believes was due to the dollar being laced with fentanyl.
Jason also claimed he started to feel symptoms after Renee touched his arm, though experts have shared their skepticism that fentanyl was the cause.
Renee responded to say: “What I do know is how I felt, what happened. It can’t be made up.”
Dr. Rebecca Donald, a fentanyl expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told WSMV: “I think it is really unlikely the substance this lady got into her system is fentanyl based on the symptoms she had.”
She added that contact through the skin does not usually expose a person to drugs at a level that could cause them harm.
“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,” she explained.
Dr. Donald added that it is possible for the drug to be inhaled if it were to be in the air, adding: “That would take more of a volume of drug or quantity of drug. It is certainly not impossible for that to happen, but one would think it would be a significant amount that you could see it on the hands and dollar bill to get into the air system.”
Fentanyl has claimed many lives across the US. Credit: Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
She added that a person’s medical history or any medications they were taking could also contribute to the symptoms they experienced, but that fentanyl contaminating anything could pose a life-threatening risk.
Police officers also shared their skepticism that the drug exposure was through the dollar bill, stating that officers did not see any residue on the money, however, it was not tested for fentanyl as nobody is being charged with the crime.
They did, however, confirm that the dollar bill would be destroyed.
The Perry County Sheriff’s Office added that there were two separate incidents in which meth and fentanyl were found in folded dollar bills on the floor of a gas station, but police said this was not something they were seeing happening in Nashville.