Dennis Quaid Says His Twins Are 'Perfectly Normal' and the 'Head of Their Class' Following 2007 Hospital Overdose

The actor, 61, talked about his children's health in a podcast

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Photo: J. Countess/Getty

Eight years after nearly losing his twins after they were given an accidental overdose at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, Dennis Quaid says his children are doing fine.

“They’re perfectly normal as could be now,” Quaid, 61, said during an appearance on Theo Von and Matthew Cole Weiss’ podcast, Allegedly, now available on iTunes. “They’re like head of their class,” the actor continued, adding that there were no negative residual effects from the 2007 medical scare.

“You go to a dark place,” Quaid continued about his fears for his children. “But you gotta pull yourself away from that, you gotta remain optimistic. But everything turned out okay. We had a happy ending.”

Just two weeks after twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace (now 8) were born in November 2007 via gestational carrier, they were accidentally given a massive overdose of the blood thinner Heparin, and spent days battling for their lives.

“It turned their blood to the consistency of water,” he said. “The danger would be rupturing an artery. And they were so small they couldn’t thrash around. I think that’s what saved them.”

Quaid and his wife Kimberly ended up reaching a $750,000 settlement against Cedars-Sinai in December 2008. The hospital was also fined $25,000 by the California Department of Public Health. In addition, the hospital also said in 2008 that they had apologized to the families involved and were taking steps to better train their staff. The Quaids also filed a lawsuit against Heparin’s drug maker, Baxter Healthcare.

“The hospital really stepped up and instituted a lot of patient safety that was very cutting edge and led the way with that,” Quaid said in the podcast. “So a lot of good things came out of it, and I think a lot of lives got saved because of that The drug companies, or the hospitals, actually put my face on the bottle to remind people for a time!

“But you know, it’s something that happens to you, you feel strongly about and you step up for it. It was really the kids that went through it and they were the ones that did it,” he said.

“It was the most frightening time of our lives,” he also said. “But they came through it.”

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