In April 2020, when Florida Virtual School (FLVS) student Kendall Tongate was only 12 years old, she felt a sharp pain in her back. As the pain increased, she asked her mom, Misty, to look at her back. What she found was a huge bruise, which was odd because Kendall hadn’t done any activities that day that would have caused it. Then, a few minutes later, her feet started to tingle. At that point, Misty decided it was time to go to the emergency room, and by the time they got there 20 minutes later, Kendall couldn’t stand.
After hours of CAT scans and blood tests, the ER doctors told them that everything looked normal and that they should go home. But Kendall still couldn’t stand, so Misty advocated for her daughter and asked that they move to the local children’s hospital. After waiting for nine hours, she was finally moved to the children’s hospital where the doctors did a MRI and realized what had happened: Kendall had suffered from a spinal cord stroke.
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