About two weeks ago, Don Johnson, one of LHS’ security guards, was rushed to the hospital after he almost lost consciousness and fell to the ground, but no worries, Johnson is getting better day by day.
It all started on August 24 when Johnson was trying to walk up the studio theatre stairs when suddenly, he got very dizzy, couldn’t breathe well and almost lost consciousness. Mike Dolan, head of LHS security, came to rescue Johnson shortly after and called the ambulance immediately. Johnson wasn’t scared when he first fell, but once he got to the hospital, his emotions changed.
“I was frightened…they [the doctors] were talking about surgery, and I’ve never had surgery before. So that kind of tweaked me a little bit,” he said. Johnson is not positive what had caused his fall, but he is pretty sure that it was from genetics.
At the hospital, Johnson found out that his blood pressure was too low; usually his heart rate was around 60 beats per minute (bpm) but that day it got down to as low as 30 bpm, so basically his blood was not pumping to the rest of his body.
The doctors didn’t waste time putting Johnson into surgery. He had to get a pacemaker put into the left side of his chest, under his collarbone. The pacemaker was put in to control the beats of Johnson’s heart — if the heart begins to beat too slow, the pacemaker will make his heart beat faster and if the heart is beating too fast, the pacemaker will slow the beats down.
After the surgery, Johnson wasn’t in much pain.
“It was like I did a hard workout, a hard chest workout; it was sore,” he said.
Johnson wants to get better as soon as he can because one aspect of Johnson’s life that he misses the most is exercising. He mentioned, “I’ve been physical my whole life, so for me to not have that, I was like, ‘Aww man God, you’re taking that away from me?!’”
Johnson is planning on starting out easy, like riding a bike, and gradually make the workouts harder and harder. His upper body is going to take a little longer to recover because of the pacemaker.
Johnson has made a huge impact at LHS with the student body. Most students know him and were sad when they heard what had happened to him. When sophomore Lauren Brennan heard about the incident, she was heartbroken.
“DJ is a tough guy. Just because he fell down doesn’t mean he’s gonna stop being our security guard,” she said.
When junior Brett Towle heard what had happened to Johnson, he didn’t know how to respond.
“I was pretty shocked. DJ is a pretty good guy and he’s doing great things for the school,” said Towle.
