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Edited on Thu Jul-08-04 09:17 AM by Bertha Venation
My nephew is fine now. Keep that in mind as you read. I decided to tell this tale when I saw another thread about anime.
Last Friday, my 19-yr-old nephew, Chris, was standing in line with his friends to enter the anime expo at the Anaheim Convention Center. Being 19 going on 12, with severe ADD as well as Asperger's Syndrome, my nephew was extremely excited and hyper -- and bored. A scary combination. He decided to do some of the moves of his favorite anime character.
Chris told his best friend, Swede, "When I kick my foot up in the air, grab it and hold it." He may as well have uttered the famous last words of a redneck: "Hey, everybody! Watch this!"
Chris kicked. Swede grabbed and held. Chris's other foot then left the ground (he doesn't remember how; we can only guess that the concrete was slick) and Chris went down headfirst. He's nearly six feet tall. Headfirst. On concrete.
Well.
The "nurse" at the first aid kiosk in the expo didn't think he needed an ambulance, even though he kept repeating his full name, his age (18, he kept saying, although his friends corrected him), and "I like wolves" over and over as if it were his name, rank & serial number.
I was getting the story from my other sister (the boy's other aunt) while the boy's mother was on her way to the convention center. Other Sister told me the "nurse" had said Chris had a "grape-size hematoma" on his forehead, and I said, "Yeah, that's a fancy way of saying 'a bruise about the size of my middle finger, asshole!'" (My sisters and I are not kind to people who do not treat our loved ones with the same level of care we would offer.)
Chris's pupils were dilated and his blood pressure shot up as he got weirder and weirder. Yet the "nurse" thought he was having a panic attack, and didn't want to make it worse by introducing an emergency crew. Even though his friends told the "nurse," "This is NOT normal for him!" (Apparently, they'd already told her he was a bubble off plumb.) But this didn't get through. NOTHING got through to this "nurse" until my sister got to the convention center. She took one look at her son and called 911.
Chris's normal state is a low buzz. Any excitement whatsoever overtakes him and he becomes rather like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs -- nervous as hell and he can't stop moving. Although he was unconscious, they had to sedate him to get him to stop moving so they could do a CT scan -- even out cold, he was buzzing. They had to sedate him so deeply that he couldn't breathe on his own, so they had to shove a tube down his throat and put him on a respirator. Now we're getting scared.
The scan showed no bleeding, no fractures, but he spent the night (still on a respirator) in intensive care because of his bizarre behavior before he lost consciousness. My sister and brother-in-law spent the night with him at the hospital. His dad never left his side; he spent the night holding Chris's hand and singing to him.
They sent Chris home the next day, a couple of hours after he'd eaten to be sure he didn't hurl. He says of that day that he remembers eating three tamales for breakfast, then waking up in the hospital the next morning.
I'm almost over the trauma of not being able to be there during this brief crisis. Moving 2,600 miles away from my family and the only home I've known has its disadvantages.
Chris is fine now. Hopefully he's going to take tai chi or ballet or something that'll teach him to move with grace. And maybe he'll buy some gum-soled shoes.
(edited for a minor error in punctuation that would've driven Chris crazy, too)
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