The Phone Call
I dropped Megan off in front of the building her classes were in that day and watched her walk off. When I saw her go into the building, I drove off. My routine after dropping her off was to go to McDonald’s just outside of town and grab a sausage burrito. I’d take that to my desk and eat it before jumping back into work.
This was something I did every morning since she started Gov School.
I was in the drive-through line. It was a busy morning, and the line of cars had gone out to the entrance of the parking lot when I arrived. It wasn’t moving fast, either. I was finally alongside the building when my phone started ringing.
Someone from the school was calling. She told me Megan had collapsed in class and maybe had a seizure. They called 911, and an ambulance was en route.
So I left the drive-through, returned to the interstate, and made record time back to the school.
This left me with a lot of time to think. I was debating about calling her doctor to get an appointment. I figured we might need to get an MRI scheduled. I was also wondering why they called 911. The phone call hadn’t made it sound so urgent.
A few months prior Megan had a splinter. It was in her finger and I helped remove it. This was a pretty small splinter as splinters go so I needed to use magnifying glasses to see it well enough to remove. While I was working on it Megan suddenly collapsed. I was able to catch her and hold her while she convulsed. This lasted for a few seconds and she came out of it. She was a little confused, disoriented, tired, and nauseous.
I laid her in our bed since we we upstairs when it happened. We propped her feet, put a cool, wet cloth on her forehead, and she was fine in no time.
Just a few weeks before the heart attack she got her ear pierced and had a similar reaction. The first piercing went very well but the second triggered her to pass out and convulse. My wife, Susan, was with her at the time. She held her until she woke back up. Again she was disoriented, tired, and nauseous but she recovered quickly and was excitedly showing her new earrings to me an hour later when they got home.
During my drive I had assumed that maybe her earring snagged on her backpack when she took it off or something and triggered a similar episode.
I wasn’t super worried when this happened previously because I know that is the kind of reaction the body can have to certain kinds of stimuli. It’s a stress response. Not a super helpful one, but something relatively normal. However, as I drove I decided she really needed to get checked out. I just wanted to make the calls and do it through our doctor, not 911. The cost difference would be significant.
As I drove I told Siri, “call my wife” and let her know what was happening. She was making sure our two boys were up and ready for school. Megan’s older brother, Alex, was a senior in high school and her younger brother, Tony, had just started his 8th grade year at the middle school. This was his first year at middle school without his sister. Courtnèe, Megan’s older sister, had graduated high school the previous year but happened to be off work that day.
I suggested she drop the boys off at school then we could work on getting Megan in to see a doctor and schedule some tests. I was hopeful we could bypass the ER.
I pulled into the parking lot at the community college campus that the Governor’s School met at and my phone rang again. They told me the ambulance was leaving with Megan and that I should meet them at the hospital.
There went my plans to bypass the ER.