Senior varsity basketball player Justin Dunn fainted in the middle of Betty Watson’s Physics class due to a partial lung collapse on Thursday, February 20. Dunn lost consciousness and was immediately taken to urgent care in Lafayette.
Dunn said he was sitting in class when he began to feel pain in his chest. “I wasn’t really sure what it was and I was just going to try to keep sitting in class,” he said. Dunn explained how he began to feel nauseous and got a headache.
“People told me I started to lean back in my chair and then my eyes rolled back to my head. I was passed out at that point and then I started to fall over when Garrett Felix caught me. The next thing I knew I woke up and the whole class was around me,” Dunn said.
Junior Garrett Felix, who sits next to Dunn in class, said Dunn was sitting in his chair when his arms went limp. Dunn knocked everything off the desk.
According to Felix, their teacher had just announced an upcoming test when Dunn began to groan. Felix thought Dunn was groaning because of the test, and was unaware of Dunn’s illness. Felix said that Dunn leaned back and fell out of his chair and he “just happened to catch him.”
According to Felix, once Dunn had passed out, senior Michael Dean pushed the desks and chairs aside and they laid Dunn down on the floor. “I caught [Dunn] and as I was pulling him back, Michael Dean was there. He pulled the chair out and pushed the desk 5 feet forward. He moved everything around and it was insane. I’ve never seen him move so fast before; it was ridiculous,” said Felix.
By this point, Dunn was beginning to wake up. “At first I was in a lot of pain and I wasn’t really sure what was going on. I was kinda confused,” said Dunn.
Felix described Dunn as looking “super white. His face was pale as a ghost.” According to Felix, senior Matt Huckins, who is a lifeguard and is certified in CPR, took Dunn’s pulse.
Dunn said when he came to, he saw Mrs. Watson “running back and forth and freaking out.” Felix said Watson was able to get on the phone within 2-3 seconds and was very quick to react to the situation.
Assistant Principal Sharon Bartlett and Campus Supervisor Jim Graves came in the the room while Dunn was lying on the ground. They had brought in a wheelchair with them. However, after they made sure he was conscious Graves walked him to the office.
According to Dunn, he went straight from school to the doctor’s, where he was informed that his lung had partially collapsed. Dunn said he knew he was sick but he was not sure with what, so he tried to just fight it off. He found out he had bronchitis, which caused his body to shut down.
Dunn said he has been taking lots of medication including coughing pills, cough syrup, and codeine. He said the coughing pills are needed because when he coughs now it aggravates his lung more than usual. “Fortunately, your body naturally heals over time, so I’m feeling a lot better,” he said.
Dunn did not go to school on Thursday or Friday following his collapse, and he rested over the weekend.
He hopes that his collapsed lung will not affect the remainder of the basketball season. “Unfortunately, I had to miss the game on Friday and practice on Thursday, but we won and we clinched DFAL,” Dunn said.
“The silver lining is that it’s not at a terrible time so I had the weekend to rest up and we have playoffs coming up so hopefully I’ll be good to go to play,” he said.