Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/1uvz6zc/tifu_by_almost_poisoning_my_79_year_old/

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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/Mr_Wooferz on 2026-07-14 05:08:45+00:00.

I’m still beside myself over this. I live with my grandmother. She is a type 2 diabetic and I was attempting to help her with her sodium intake by using a sodium substitute. She’s someone obsessed with salt. She uses it on everything and no matter how many times I told her to please use less, she didn’t. I’ve tried multiple different substitutes, and the only one she likes is the Morton one. She didn’t notice a difference so I assumed that her sodium levels would come down a bit from not using excessive sodium.

That was back in mid March this year. And ever since then I kept buying the same salt substitute whenever we ran out. The last couple weeks though my grandmother has seemed off. She kept telling me she was fine so I didn’t really think anything of it. Then today she was using that thing you stick on your finger to check your heart rate (forgive me I do not know what it’s called) and her heart rate was 45! I naturally start panicking and say we need to call 911. The ambulance got here, checked her over. They gave her an I.V. med to get her heart rate back up and then told her she needed to go to the hospital for tests. They took her and her potassium levels were extremely high. They ran other tests and couldn’t find anything else wrong with her. Kidneys were fine, heart is fine, everything came back normal except the potassium.

I didn’t realize that they use potassium in salt substitutes. I didn’t think about what they would use to make it less salty. I didn’t read the nutrition label. And now I feel so awful because she got so sick. She’s the only family I have left and I was slowly poisoning her without knowing. All I was trying to do was help her lower her sodium levels 😭

TL:DR I bought a salt substitute without checking the nutritional label realizing that they use potassium. Used the salt substitute in all of my grandmothers food and today she got admitted to the ER for extremely high potassium.

ETA: thank you everyone for bringing my attention to the fact that this isn’t as simple of a mistake as I thought. While I do love my grandmother very much, I get overwhelmed with her care as she is my only support system. I’ve seen the suggestions, and I’m going to try them. I’m also going to be more aware of her medications and how they could react to potassium.

And thank you for everyone who is being supportive. I felt really bad for what happened and how scared she was when she went to the hospital. She hasn’t updated me since last night so I’m unsure of her exactly condition currently but I did let her know to tell the doctor about her salt substitute that we’ve been using!