Just say no

I started back to school this past week for staff development. I was working in my room when there was a knock on the door. One of my absolute favorite people at school, S, was standing there with a red face, red knuckles, and rapidly turning-red arms. She said she had taken zentrex - a diet/energy pill and she thought she was having an allergic reaction. We went back to her room and she took 2 Benadryl and then I walked her down to the nurse, all the while her face & arms are getting redder and redder. The nurse took her blood pressure and it was 130 over 86 - not high, but higher than it normally is. We talked her into letting me drive her to see the doctor and we started walking back towards our rooms.

S then says, "DeAnn, I think I need to go to the emergency room". I said OK & began walking a bit quicker.

She then says, "DeAnn, we need to hurry". I said OK & was almost running down the hall.

She then starts sobbing and begins crying out for help. We're right next to our rooms & I see that our friend's door is open & she's inside. I yelled "K Come quick!" while running into my room to get my purse & keys. K runs out (she told me later that she could tell something was wrong by the sound of my voice), sees S and goes over to help her walk outside. I brief her on what's going on, all the while our friend is barely walking and sobbing uncontrollably.

Thankfully a man teacher showed up and helped K and S walk outside. I run to my car and pull it up under the awning where they are all waiting. S is now on her knees, completely unable to stand. We can't get her into the car so another friend, J, calls 911.

We laid S out on the ground after the dispatcher told us to and we're trying to keep her awake but she's having a hard time keeping her eyes open. The paramedics arrived within 4 minutes, took one look at the bottle of pills, and said they'd been called about these several times before. They took her blood pressure and it was 160 over something, I can't remember, but it had shot up in just a few minutes.

S started coming around, sitting up and talking. Her blood pressure started going down. Apparently the Benadryl was really working at this point. After a few minutes the paramedics left and S started getting her normal color back.

It was the craziest, scariest thing I've ever had to go through. I watched her go from having a red face and arms to not even being able to stand up in the span of 2 or 3 minutes. We were all so filled with adrenaline that at this point - after we knew she was OK - all we could do was laugh. We told her that we called 911 after we realized that we weren't going to be able to put her in the car and she said, "No wonder I was taking diet pills!"