My Life Flashed Before Me

By Brittany Eatmon

It was a cold February day. I caught the bus to school like I would usually do. I was nine years old, in the third grade. I was sort of chubby. I had long black hair.

Something was wrong that day, but I couldn't tell what was wrong with me. I started to get dizzy while I was on the bus. But when I got to class I did not worry about my head. I just thought that my headache would go away. I sat in the class trying to pay attention to the teacher.

At 10:30 recess time, my head felt like it was boiling so I rushed to the bathroom. I went to the sink and splashed some cold water on my head. It worked for a second.

When recess was over I went back to the class. My head felt like it was going to explode. When it was math time, I was so happy because it would be lunchtime soon. I was thinking that I could go to the school nurse at lunch.

But by then, the minutes became like hours and I was not seeing very clearly. Finally lunchtime came. I jumped up and said, "wow!" I ate my lunch, and I rushed over to the school nurse.

The nurse had brown eyes, black-curly hair, and was Mexican. The nurse took my temperature. She said that I had the highest fever she had ever seen, so she called my grandma.

My grandma came and got me. My grandma has long black hair, dark brown eyes, and she is tall. She looked like an angle when I saw her.

By the time she got to school I was in a burning sweat. My temperature was a 104 degrees. I couldn’t stop moving, because I was so hot. I couldn’t sit still. She took me home and helped me put on my pajamas. She read me a story so I could calm down, but I just couldn’t pay attention.

My grandma’s friend came and stayed with us. My grandma’s friend’s name was Shana. Shana had blond hair, hazel eyes, and was very tall. Shana put a cold cloth on my head and she sat by me while my grandma fixed me a bowl of soup. It smelled delicious, but I couldn't eat it because it was hard for me to swallow it and I felt like I would throw it up.

Tamika came home, but Tanisha wasn’t with her. Tamika and Tanisha are my little sisters, and so is Breonna. But Breonna was at the babysitter’s.

My grandma asked Tamika where Tanisha was. Tamika said, "She didn’t get on the bus."

We waited for an hour and everybody panicked. I thought someone had kidnapped her. I was so scared that I got sicker.

My grandma called the police. The police took a half an hour to get to my house. The police officer asked Tamika a lot of questions like, "When did you last see her?" After that he asked my grandma, "Do you have a picture of the missing child?" The police filed a missing person’s report and left.

After an hour the police found Tanisha. She had followed her best friend home. When the police found her, they asked her if she knew her address. She said no. So the police officer called the principal at the school and said, "We found her."

When Tanisha got home grandma called the hospital and they rushed an ambulance to come and get me. While the ambulance was on its way, grandma packed everything we would need in case I had to stay overnight. Grandma packed a blanket and some food.

The ambulance came and I was rushed to the emergency room. The ambulance ride was very bumpy and I had to sit in cold ice water. My bottom felt so cold that I wanted to get out of it and just sit down on something warm.

They took photos of my insides. They did surgery because I had something in my body. But they didn’t think it was my appendix that was causing me to be sick. Maybe I had the flu, too. The doctors took my appendix out anyway, and I was left with a scar on the left side of my stomach. I was knocked out for the whole time.

When I woke the next morning my grandma was crying. I asked her why and she said, "Because you had been dead for 5 minutes."

I told her that while I was dead for five minutes my life flashed before me! While I was on the operating table I saw all the times that I was happy. I saw all the times I got mad and took it out on my sisters, and the time I got mad at my grandma and shut the door on her. It flashed before me like a movie. Then I felt a little better. As the days past I could walk and breath on my on.

That was the scariest experience in my whole life, and I hope that will never happen to me again.