I Want The Truth

I got the call from the school nurse at 2:15pm Friday. They told me Jessica was on her way to the hospital in an ambulance. And here's the reason they gave me:

Jessica was late getting to school on Friday. Once there she was very, very, very sleepy - so sleepy that she fell asleep in the restroom, and started choking at lunch because she fell asleep while eating. The teacher had a rough time rousing her. During one of her awake periods, Jessica said she had gone to the dentist that morning and the dentist gave her medicine.

Thing is - Jessica did not have a dentist appointment, and to top it off, Jessica doesn't make up stories. Never has. Never tells a lie. Her brain is just not wired that way. Her teachers in elementary and middle school found it impossible for her to concoct a story for reading class even when she was given the start of the story. She has never engaged in imaginative play. She does, however, repeat verbatim things that people tell her.

I was told that Jessica's group home manager was following the ambulance to the hospital, and I told the school I was headed there also. Since I was at work downtown, it would take me about 20 minutes to get to the hospital. When I arrived, there was no group home staff anywhere to be found, and no one had been there.

Jessica was indeed sleepy. She barely opened her eyes to tell me hi and then she nodded off again. Usually a person that requires four strong men to hold her down for a blood draw, she didn't even whimper when the nurse stuck her. This definitely was not Jessica....

I continued to try tracking down the group home manager. We needed answers to questions about how Jessica's previous night had gone, what had happened before school, and if anyone else at the group home was sick. But I couldn't get her. Finally a strange man popped into the room and said he was a group home staff member. But, he had no answers to our questions.

The ER doc had a cat scan done. I was worried that Jessica's shunt may be failing, although her symptoms really didn't support that. The cat scan agreed - it was not a shunt issue. Fortunately, the ER doc astutely ordered a tox screen - a test to check just what Jessica may have been given or ingested.

Apparently, she was either given too much of her meds, or she was given meds that belonged to another group home resident. But the group home staff refused to accept that. They said she was fine and they had no idea what the doctor was talking about.

Jessica was finally discharged, and I have left a message for the director of the company to contact me. Although I am sure there is no written record of the extra meds, just the fact that someone told Jessica to say she went to the dentist convinces me that the person knew something wrong had occurred.

I'm not sure where all this is going to go, but I will keep you posted...