“ I was standing then gone,” Melissa B., 19, says.
It was a late Tuesday night, the week of Thanksgiving, and the girls JV basketball team was scrimmaging a boy’s team their coach had brought in to play them.
Melissa was having problems with her blood pressure and was taking medication. At the time, Melissa had forgotten to take the medication, and didn’t want to turn around and go back home. She is known to be a person always on time and never late.
She says, “ If I was late, it was not a good day.”
She decided she would be fine without taking the meds for two hours. It was early in the season and some were out of shape; the coach decided to have the team run quitters.
Melissa say, “ My legs hurt so bad” because they had started to cramp up.
There were thirty minutes left of practice when they went into a team huddle and all she remember is falling over. When she woke up, she was in the ambulance on her way to the Hospital. Her mom was sitting right next to her, and mentions her blood pressure was low. When arriving, she had given blood out of one arm and within 5 minute they had came back and ask to take blood out of the other arm. Melissa’s father was worried and had asked why the needed to take blood twice. The nurses replied her potassium was at a 0.3 and it should be between three and five. By them taking blood twice, they thought they would get a different result. It turn out it was the same and they need to get the potassium into her as soon as possible, but since she was young, they need to transfer her to children hospital.
“ Then began the worst night of my life,” she says.
She remembers the ride to children’s because they had Christmas music on and she loves Christmas music. Once arriving, they got her on an IV and figure out she had heart arthymia from the abnormal EKG, which is an electrocardiogram scanning the activity of the heart.
When starting to inject the Potassium, they soon figure out that was a bad idea. Melissa’s arm started to cramp up and it was painful.
“I was screaming.”
Finally, the medication she was on kicked in and she was able to rest. After being up all night, her doctor arrived on her day off in jeans and says, “ You should have died last night.” Making her one of 2% that didn’t died from low potassium level.