Tuesday, July 17, 2007

"She's Seizing! "

In costume class today, the class was sitting around a large table while Suzanne (the Costume Shop Supervisor) was re-teaching a lesson about sewing down snaps. The classmate sitting in the chair next to me, Danielle, fell from her chair to the floor beside me. She just flopped down quickly, so at first I thought she had just slipped from her seat. Then I saw her eyes were rolling back in her head and Danielle was starting to shake her appendages. I yelled at Barbara, who was sewing a pair of trousers across the room, "Barbara, she's seizing! She's having a seizure!!" Like 4 people all said, that someone should call 9-1-1. Barbara rushed to the staff phone and called for help.
Danielle is a typical-looking girl, who is probably just a few years younger than me. She was shaking on the floor slowly, then quicker for a while, then slowly again. This lasted for about 3-5 minutes. I grabbed Danielle's purse and started digging looking for any sort of medical alert information that could be pertinent. She didn't have any sort of medical i.d. in her purse or wallet, so I had the classmate who was sitting next to Danielle check her for a medical alert bracelet or necklace; nothing. One of the students who was in the costume shop for lab hours, seemed to have some medical training (she later explained that she works at a Women's services clinic). The classmate checked Danielle's mouth to make sure she wasn't biting her tongue and that it hadn't rolled back into her throat. I suggested we put a pillow under Danielle's head, since she was seizing on a tile floor. Some boys were outside ready to wave down the ambulance.
When we heard that the Firemen were coming up the stairs, all us students went into the next classroom over, to give the Firemen some space to work. There were 3 or 4 of them. We could still see and hear everything from the next room.
The firemen shouted Danielle's name at her and she opened her eyes and frantically spasmed for a minute. She seemed kinda panicked. The firemen had all sorts of medical stuff going on. Us students tried not to look, but it was hard to look away. We made awkward comments to each other. The firemen started asking questions about HOW Danielle fell, so Suzanne waved me back into the classroom to tell a fire man about how she landed and her eyes rolling back and all.
Suzanne started searching Danielle's cellphone for contacts, like 'Mom', since no one had a in-case-of-emergency contact to call for Danielle. A police officer joined the group and Suzanne told him that a "Momma" is listed in the cellphone. So the officer started piecing together info that he could gather about Danielle from her driver's license and cellphone. A stretcher was brought in, and Danielle was taken away.
After the stretcher had cleared out, I gathered Danielle's school supplies and put them in her drawer in the costume shop. Then I found Danielle's key chain (with car keys), so those went to the theatre's main office for safe keeping. We still had an hour left of class to go.

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