On Thursday, March 3, I got a terrifying phone call from Jalen's school. They said he had been hurt on the playground and they were calling an ambulance. I headed to the school as information was still coming in. I made him an appointment to get him in to Dr. Mills, but they decided to send him right to the children's hospital in an ambulance.
When I got to the school, the ambulance was there and it was a horrible sight. My heart fell. Jalen was already loaded and I climbed in with him. He was definitely not himself. I knew something was wrong. We weren't sure exactly what happened. Some children said that Jalen fell off the merry go round and other children said he was pushing it and got knocked down. So we thought maybe he had a concussion. He was complaining about his neck and back hurting so they put a brace on him.
Neither of us had ever been in an ambulance before. So that was an adventure.
When we got to the hospital, they asked Jalen how he had arrived there. He said it was in my car. He didn't remember riding in an ambulance. He also said his birthday was January 18 instead of 19. He was able to answer all the rest of their questions.
We got settled into a room in the ER of the children's hospital. At some point, I got a call from the principal that said they had watched the security video and Jalen hadn't been knocked down, he had collapsed. He had been pushing the merry go round, stopped took a breather, then pushed, backed up and collapsed.
Gradually we were able to piece together more of the story. After he collapsed, he went to music class. While there, he was not behaving normally so the teacher put a fan on him. His hands were read and his skin was splotchy. She then called the nurse. When he got to the nurse, his heart rate was 120. They were able to lower it a little, but never lower than 100. That's why they decided to call. The assistant principal called me to say that she thought he showed signs of having a seizure.
I mentioned that we had been in Hawaii and asked if maybe he had some kind of a tropical infection. They asked if he had been tested for Covid, but they didn't test him. They did blood work, but there was no infection. His blood sugar was low. It was 65, but it isn't considered hypoglycemic unless you get to 60.
Because he had complained about his neck, they sent him for a CT Scan. I was pretty sure there wasn't anything wrong with his neck at that point, but they checked to be sure. They didn't find anything.
We were there for six hours and he wasn't able to eat anything. Once they got all the tests back, they let him have a popsicle and they let us go home. David came and got us because I had left my car at the school.
I kept Jalen home on Friday and he slept in until 10 a.m. That is so not like him.
He laid on the couch all day. In the afternoon, he built a Lego creation. It is not like Jalen to be so still all day. He was obviously still exhausted. He wasn't back to his normal self until Tuesday.
On Monday, I took him to Dr. Mills. (She doesn't work on Fridays.) She ordered an echocardiogram and neurology scan for him. The echocardiogram came back normal and we haven't been scheduled for the neurology visit yet. So we really have no idea what happened. One thing I do think is that Jalen needs to have more protein in his diet. He lives on cold cereal and Skinny Pop. Ever since the collapse, we have been reinforcing that he has to eat protein. He's been doing a great job with that.
We received the bill today. It's just over $8,500! Thank goodness we have insurance. I don't know how much we'll have to pay, but we have some money on the Flex card that should cover most of our deductible. I would feel better about it if we knew why it happened. I hate to think that we are paying for nothing. Mostly I'm just glad he's okay. I hope never to ride in an ambulance with one of my children again!
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