Sept. 27, 2005, Kingston, Michigan

By Dawne Prochilo

The telephone rang just as we walked through the kitchen door. It was a telephone call that I never thought we’d receive.

“Dawne, you need to come up to the school,” the voice shrieked. “Ally fell.”

“Yes, I know that, Brad,” I told the him. He was a good friend of my daughter. “I was at her game. I saw her fall.”

“No, she fell outside,” Brad stammered.

“What do you mean,” I asked, confused.

“Get up here,” Brad exclaimed. “An ambulance is coming.”

“What?” I asked nervously.

“An ambulance,” Brad repeated. “She fell in the parking lot.”

I practically screamed and we left.

My youngest daughter stayed home. I wanted to assess what was going on at the school before she saw her sister. My husband and I ran back out to our car and at a high speed we raced through the dark roads of our town.

With my foot down on the accelerator, I hit speeds of 80 in a 35-mile-per-hour zone. We sped past the hardware store and local diner; my son was waiting to turn and head home. Seeing our familiar car speed past him must have concerned him. My son, like most people in our town of 650, knew I never sped. He changed his blinker choice and followed us.

As I squealed the tires and headed into the main parking lot, I saw the town’s ambulance and a crowd of people. I parked next to the ambulance exiting the car before it came to a complete stop.

I ran over and saw my sixteen-year old daughter lying lifeless and unconscious. As soon as I knelt down beside her she had a seizure

I spotted Brad in the crowd.

“What happened,” I asked Brad and Ally’s cousin John.

“She was walking out with me,” said John. “We were just walking and talking and all of a sudden she just … she just went down.”

I turned my attention back to Ally. The seizure had ceased. She was once again lying perfectly still. Her eyes were rolling in the back of her eyes.

I grabbed her hand and called out to her. No response. I began to panic.

The neighboring town’s hospital emergency unit arrived. As ambulance crew settled in and took over for our local rescue unit, I reflected on the events that led up to this moment.

Only an hour earlier my husband, youngest daughter, and myself had been watching Ally play her third basketball game of the season. She scored 12 points and had a dozen rebounds. Not bad, although she is a six-foot-three junior.

But the incident earlier in the first half of the game came to my mind. Ally had been running down the court toward the play of the ball when she and a player from the opposing team tripped over each other.

Ally hit the ground first. She fell backwards, bumping the back of her head on the gymnasium floor. Then the girl that stumbled with her accidentally kicked Ally on the head. Ally immediately curled up on her knees and cradled her head. She stayed in that position for about five seconds. The game came to a halt.

Ally stood up on her own and ran back into the game but her coach signaled for her to exit the game. The team’s trainer and registered nurse talked with Ally. After the discussion with the trainer, Ally looked across the gym at me and gave me her infamous thumbs up to tell me that she was all right.

After about five minutes Ally was back in the game. I knew even then that the coach didn’t ask her to return. I knew in my heart and mind that she had asked him if she could to return to the game. Ally finished the game against their rival team.

Usually we wait for Ally after her games. She likes to see her statistics. But we were both tired and decided that she’d be home soon. So we left.

I looked down at Ally. She was having another seizure. Her second since my arrival. Tears began to fill my eyes.

I looked back to John. I threw him my cell phone and told him to call Ally’s father.

The team trainer and two parents were talking to her and kneeling next to her. The tears began to fall.

I kept picturing my smiling, full-of-life daughter. She was the optimist among her friends. She always had her teachers and coaches smiling. When there was a pep rally, Ally was the one the other kids looked to for encouragement.

But now this young lady wasn’t smiling or full of energy. She wasn’t making anyone smile.

“Ally, it’s mom,” I cried.

The other two parents and trainer continued their vigil and called her name. Her body was shaking uncontrollably. There was no verbal response. Ally was still unconscious.

“Come on Ally,” I cried.

The paramedics were ready. They scooted us away and loaded Ally’s unresponsive body onto a gurney. One of the paramedics took me aside and asked me questions while the other medical staff worked on Ally. I answered with my eyes on Ally.

Ally was loaded into the ambulance. I called her father to tell him which hospital she was being transported to. But then something happened.

Ally stopped breathing.

I heard the word intubate. I knew what this meant. I could feel my heart beating fast.

“Why isn’t she breathing,” I asked the paramedic. I wanted to know what was happening to my baby.

“Wait one minute,” he said

After a minute he asked me to sit in the front of the ambulance so I could travel with her to the hospital.

I ran to the front of the ambulance and got in. I watched from my seated position as the paramedics worked on Ally. They had cut off her game shirt and had electrodes hooked to her chest. There was a tube down her throat. They had her hooked up to a respirator. Every once in awhile her body would twitch and a seizure would take over.

The paramedic told me to calm down but how was a mother supposed to react?

In the next few seconds Ally’s condition worsened. Her body would go from an unresponsive state to massive convulsions. The lead paramedic tried to calm me down. Concern washed over everyone’s faces.

I glanced at the high school parking lot and main road into town. People gathered in droves. Cars had stopped on the side of the road and were watching.

“Mom,” the lead paramedic called out. I looked back in the ambulance and the man told me that he didn’t feel comfortable taking Ally by ambulance to the nearby town’s hospital. “They’ll just take her to the nearest trauma hospital,” he explained. “I’ve radioed the trauma center and they’re sending a helicopter. She’s not stable and with the blow to her head….”

After a moment of discussion and update on Ally’s condition, I left the front seat of the ambulance and called Ally’s dad. I told him about the change.

I found my husband in the mob of people. I was immediately enveloped in arms. He stroked my back and held me tight. The entire time I kept thinking to myself that this couldn’t be happening.

“How is she?” Joe asked me.

“I don’t know,” I wept.

He continued rubbing my back and holding me.

“Mom,” the paramedic called to me. Joe released me and we walked over to the ambulance. “She’s not stable yet but the Flight Care is on its way. Since she had a head injury and she lost consciousness we need to get her to the trauma center,” the paramedic said.

“What’s wrong with her,” I said.

“We don’t know,” he said.

By now Ally’s dad had arrived. I explained everything to him. We talked with the paramedic.

The helicopter was on its way. The local rescue crew was setting up a makeshift landing strip for the helicopter. People were asked to move their cars in the parking lot. While we waited for the helicopter to arrive my youngest daughter called my cell phone.

“What’s wrong with Ally?” Tears filled her words.

“I don’t know,” I told Shelby. “We’re waiting for a helicopter.”

“What’s wrong!” The crying persisted.

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “Joe will be home soon. As soon as the helicopter leaves, I’m leaving.”

She sobbed and made me promise to call.

Within minutes we could hear the helicopter. The noise from blades thudded in the dark sky. Joe hugged me tight as the helicopter made its descent.

Moments later Ally was stable enough for the journey. They loaded her onto the helicopter’s gurney. I ran over to her, kissed her, and told her I loved her. Then she was whisked away.

I began to follow when I was told I couldn’t go with her.

The hospital trauma center that Ally was being taken to was 50 miles away. Once Ally was in the air I told Joe to go home with Shelby. My son, two of Ally’s friends and I sped away.

Ally was already at the hospital when we arrived. I met Ally’s dad in the triage where they had her listed as Jane Doe. We registered her but weren’t allowed to see Ally. There was a problem en route to the hospital and they had to get her stable again.

We went to the waiting area. By now there was about 50 people in the waiting area with us. Friends, teammates, and parents had all come to wait with us.

The next few hours are a blur to me. Tests, cat-scans, and x-rays.

Hours after arriving at the trauma center, Ally was admitted into the Neuro Intensive Care Unit. She was put into a drug-induced coma. She was still on the respirator. The seizures had ended.

While I sat in Ally’s NICU room, her father, brother, cousin and two friends tried to make themselves comfortable in the NICU Waiting Room.

Some time in the middle of the night Ally was taken for a second EEG.

Ally ended staying in the NICU for two days. She was brought out of the drug-induced coma on the second day. The doctors had diagnosed Ally with a Grade Four Concussion.

Ally was indefinitely out of sports. She had a year’s worth of testing and doctor’s appointments.

She was released from her neurologist’s care just two weeks after the initial incident and she was playing in her second game when she tumbled.

I received another telephone call that night. Andy and I traveled 60 miles to this hospital. Ally had collapsed. She was taken for more tests.

From that moment on I decided that basketball was not in her future. She attended sporting events and acted as the sideline cheerleader. She enjoyed sports but knew that she can’t physically participate. For now being a cheerleader is enough for her.

I look back on the newspaper articles about her and I cry.

I’ll never forget the words that my son Andy said to me as we stood outside the hospital that first night. We both needed a moment to reflect on the unspoken words that could’ve left us without Ally.

“Mom, if this had happened 20 seconds later. She could be dead. She would’ve been driving home.”

Those words will forever haunt my mind.

Much to our surprise the following school year Ally rejoined the varsity basketball team. She was in all the local newspapers…not because of her accident but because the Detroit Free Press had named her as one of the Top 100 Basketball Players in the State of Michigan.

I gloated.

We are in the middle of her regular season with the districts looming. I keep telling myself every time she walks out onto the court to be calm. She’ll be all right.

She’s a fighter.

Her smiles fill my days. Her laughter keeps me going. No matter where she is or where I am … she’ll always be my sunshine.

Twenty seconds later….

Dawne Prochilo is the mother of five, an avid reader and writer, and a staff writer and reporter for a newspaper. She hopes to one day publish a novel.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 | Email This Post

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