Wisconsin

Kids Step In When Mom Suffers Seizure in the Night – Leading Doctors to Discover a Scary Medical Issue

A Wisconsin mom of four has her children to thank for helping save her life

NBCUniversal Media, LLC

A Wisconsin woman has her four kids to thank after they banded together to help their mom when she suffered a medical episode – one which led doctors to discover a scary underlying issue.

Six-year-old Jaxon McDonald was sleeping in the same room as his mother April, and he awoke in the night to a strange sound. The sound – which Jaxon described as sounding "like a zombie" – was actually the sound of his mother having a seizure.

"It sounded like she was going to throw up," Jaxon said.

He immediately jumped out of bed and alerted his three sisters.

"He was like, 'something is wrong with Mommy,'" sister Morgan McDonald said.

Another sister, Kendra, then ran out of the house and down to her grandparents' to get help while the others called 9-1-1 and stayed by their mom's side.

"I told [my grandmother] it's an emergency, something is wrong with my mom," Kendra said.

"I come over here and I look in the bedroom — and [April] was having a seizure," said April's mother, Charlene Thomas.

Doctors who examined April after the event ended up finding a large mass — the size of a tomato — on her brain. Her family said she had been suffering from intense headaches for months. The 35-year-old was actually supposed to see a neurologist in just a week.

After discovering the tumor, doctors put April into a medically induced coma and were able to surgically remove most of the mass from her brain. Now awake and able to walk and talk on her own, April is on her road to recovery — with thanks to the team effort by her quick-thinking children.

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