Yesterday my husband and I were walking our dogs through our neighborhood when my husband noticed a teenage girl lying face down on the sidewalk in front of a house across the street. My husband pointed her out to me and we decided that I would go find out if she was OK. As I got closer, I noticed that she was lying with her head cradled in her arms as if she had just decided to lay down and take a nap. If she had been lying in the grass, I would have thought just that and probably would not have even stopped. As it was, though, she was lying in front of the steps leading up to the house – an odd place to decide to take a nap.
I called to her a few times as I approached so that if she was sleeping I wouldn’t startle her. She did not respond at all. I knelt beside her and could see that she was breathing normally. Her breathing was regular and maybe slightly shallow – much in the same way as someone who is sleeping. I gently shook her while I put my mouth fairly close to her ear and asked if she was OK, if she could hear me, etc. She did not respond in any way. She did not appear to be hurt – no blood, no bruises, no torn clothing.
I called to a man who was a few houses down to call 911. By this time, several other neighbors had come out to see what all the fuss was about. Two women said that they had walked by earlier and had seen the girl sitting on the steps sobbing. They asked if they could help and the girl did not speak to them or even acknowledge that they were there. They figured that she was just really upset and did not want to talk. At this time she did not appear to be having any obvious medical issues. Nobody recognized the girl.
I stayed with the girl until the EMTs arrived. I did not turn her over for fear of hurting her. Her condition remained the same the entire time I was with her. When the EMTs got there they rolled the girl on to her back and started taking her vital signs. She did not need assistance breathing. She was unresponsive when they rolled her over. She did not have any obvious external injuries. She had some drool --as you would expect from someone who was soundly sleeping-- but nothing that seemed to indicate any foaming at the mouth and no blood.
Finally the girl’s mother walked up. The girl lives at the end of the block. The EMTs asked the girl’s mother if the girl ever had seizures. The mother said yes but that the girl is not on any medication.
What was wrong with this girl? It didn’t really look like she fell down (from a seizure or anything else) as her head looked comfortably cradled in her arms. Her body was not in an odd position (except that she was lying in front of some stairs on the sidewalk). I wonder if it could have been some kind of diabetic shock or perhaps an overdose. Does anyone have any ideas?
I think I’m going to swing by her house after work today to make sure she is OK. I was really worried when I left but the police and EMTs said there wasn’t really anything more I could do and that they had things under control.
On a side note, I felt really glad that we were there to do what we could to help this girl. At the same time, I felt so helpless. I don’t know CPR so I was afraid of what would happen if she stopped breathing before the EMTs arrived. I decided (a couple of months ago) to go back to school in the fall to be a respiratory therapist. This incident made me realize that I am making the right decision.
I have two friends who have had mild seizures. Both of them are known to have a seizure, then go to the bedroom, put on pyjamas, and crawl into bed, and lose short term memory. Doctors suspect one of them was having seizures for months before being spotted.
I wonder if that could be narcolepsy? I don’t know much about that disorder, but I do recall hearing that it can be triggered by stress and that it may be related in some way to epilepsy. I think it’s a fairly rare disorder. Just a thought. Let us know if you find out, though, OK? That would scare hell outta me.
Hmm. I wonder if it could be narcolepsy. I checked out some sites about narcolepsy and found something called “cataplexy” that seems to describe the state I found the girl in.
Also, I didn’t think about her possibly having a warning that she was about to have a seizure and had prepared for it by lying down.
LifeOnWry, I was scared. As I was approaching her I kept repeating to myself, “Please let her be breathing.” When I was sitting with her I was actually fairly calm. I was concerned for her and worried about what I would do if her condition worsened but I didn’t panic at all. As I was leaving the scene I did have a little emotional jolt of fear / relief / worry.
I was once so depressed that I lay down in the middle of the street and didn’t respond to anyone. Later that day I was locked up in a mental hospital
unrelated:
An old man that I knew passingly died on the side of one of the busiest streets in Tucson in the middle of the day and lay there, dead, on the sidewalk for over an hour before anyone called an ambulance.
Yesterday after work I stopped by the house I thought the girl lived in. She doesn’t live there. I went up the block and asked several people on that street and nobody knew her. Finally, I went up to the house of the people who called 911 to ask if they had found out anything else.
They found out that she did live on the street. They also knew her name and knew that she had been taken to Children’s Hospital but they did not know what her diagnosis was or how she was doing. They did pass on some worrying information about the girl’s mother. For one thing (among many) the mother did not go to the hospital with the girl and apparently did not go to the hospital at all (the hospital called the neighbor who called 911 several times asking for an adult to come to the hospital to consent for treating the girl).
I called Children’s Hospital and it looks like the girl was treated in the ER and released so I guess she is doing OK, which is great. I still wonder what was wrong with her but I guess I’ll never really know.
Sounds like that girl’s got more problems than an ER visit will be able to handle. If you can get a fix on her name and address, it might be in her best interest if you called child protective services (or your locality’s equivalent) on her behalf.
I have epilepsy, and after my last seizure, I fell out of a chair into that exact position, head cradled in my arms. I believe shallow breathing is a common symptom after a seizure. It certainly is in my case.
-Lil
She could have “tweaker crashed.” If she had been doing a lot of speed her body might have decided it was time to rest. A girl I used to know got sent to rehab b/c some police found her lying as you described on a sidewalk.
Since the mother said she has seizures, it was probably related to that. I learned a bit about epilepsy last year, and it turns out it’s very different than what most of us think. Most people do not have convulsions during seizures (called “grand mal” seizures). Seizures can resemble someone simply spacing out for a few minutes.
Grelby, there’s a Children Hospital in every major and minor city in the US (slight exaggeration).
