Alishia Hicks was residence with the flu when she acquired the decision from the Henderson Upper School in Dorchester on May 4.
The nurse’s workplace was calling about her 17-year-old son D’Andre, she advised Newsweek. The 51-year-old mother lives together with her three kids in Boston, Massachusetts.
“He reported to the nurse that he felt dizzy, he was shaking and numb on the left side,” she mentioned.
The mom’s thoughts instantly turned to a stroke, a medical emergency that runs within the household. Hicks has skilled three strokes previously 10 years and continues to reside with uncomfortable side effects, together with weak point on her left aspect and reliance on a wheelchair.
But Hicks claimed the nurse advised her, “He looks okay to me. Are you going to come pick him up?”
GEOFF ROBINS / Contributor/AFP
Hicks replied that she was unwell and used a wheelchair, so she couldn’t arrive quick sufficient.
“I said, ‘Please dial 911, he could be stroking,'” Hicks recalled. “She said, ‘I don’t think so, I don’t think it’s that serious, I don’t think I need to dial 911.'”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a few of the indicators an individual is likely to be affected by a stroke embrace:
- Sudden numbness or weak point within the face, arm, or leg, particularly on one aspect of the physique.
- Sudden confusion, hassle talking, or problem understanding speech.
- Sudden hassle seeing in a single or each eyes.
- Sudden hassle strolling, dizziness, lack of steadiness, or lack of coordination.
- Sudden extreme headache with no recognized trigger.
Hicks continued to argue with the nurse and stress the household’s historical past of strokes. Increasingly frantic, she hung up and known as the college’s entrance desk. Finally, she mentioned, a staffer on the faculty known as the state Department of Children and Families (DCF), which known as her again.
“Now I’m hysterical,” she mentioned. On the cellphone with DCF, she screamed, “He’s gonna die! They’re gonna let him die!”
In complete, not less than 45 minutes handed earlier than 911 was dispatched. D’Andre was finally taken to Tufts Medical Center, the place docs confirmed that he suffered an ischemic stroke and eliminated the blood clot from his mind.
Hicks is demanding solutions from the college, which she mentioned left her son “traumatized.” D’Andre, who additionally has autism, nonetheless experiences weak point on his left aspect. He has not returned to high school within the two weeks since.
“I hate to say it was a racial thing, but it really seems as though if my son was a different race they would have treated him right away,” Hicks mentioned. “My son said he felt like they didn’t take him seriously.”
Eight in 10 Black Americans imagine race impacts the standard of their well being care, a survey from the Pulse of Black America revealed final month.
Another research in JAMA Network Open decided there was “deeply rooted anti-Black racism” within the subject of educational drugs. A University of Chicago research from February analyzed 40,000 hospital notes on greater than 18,000 sufferers and located that Black sufferers have been greater than twice as possible as their white counterparts to be characterised with “negative descriptors.”
Newsweek reached out to Boston Public Schools for remark.