UPDATE: Head athletic trainer Rick Burkholder updated Patterson's condition following the afternoon practice. Doctors at Lehigh Valley Hospital have ruled out any bleeding of the brain as a result of Patterson's seizure. Patterson is spending the night in the hospital with his wife and is in good spirits, texting his teammates that he wants to return to the field, and is completely stable and asymptomatic, Burkholder said.
"They're still studying (his test results), but his lab stuff that they did there was normal, and that's a good sign," Burkholder said.
Burkholder added that there is no timetable for Patterson's return.
While transitioning from one drill to offensive line/defensive line one-on-ones, Patterson hit the ground out of nowhere and suffered a seizure for about four minutes, according to Burkholder. Dr. Jeremy Ng, the ER doctor who is present at every practice as part of Burkholder's staff, along with Burkholder and assistant trainer Chris Peduzzi all helped to stabilize Patterson before the paramedics arrived to transport Patterson to Lehigh Valley Hospital.
Following the seizure, Patterson was alert and stable and updated his teammates via text message from Peduzzi that "he's cool."
"That's not a normal situation for us, however, from a medical standpoint, we handled it as a normal situation because we're trained to do that," said Burkholder. "We started an IV on him. We had medication available on the field, it did not require any medication. And then we had the paramedics take over to spineboard him just in case it was trauma induced. We put him in the ambulance. He's at Lehigh Valley Hospital right now. He's absolutely alert, stable, totally communicating with everybody to the point that he's joking a little bit. We won't speculate what happened to him other than that he had a seizure. They'll do all the testing at Lehigh Valley Hospital to determine why he had the seizure, and that will start with a CT scan of his head and then they'll work down from there. We'll give you updates as we go."
Burkholder added that there is nothing in Patterson's medical history to indicate that he is predisposed to having a seizure. He also further explained what happened physically to Patterson during the episode.
"There are different levels of seizures and the body just goes into involuntary contractions and they lose consciousness, they don't have control of their extremities," said Burkholder. "That's the outward signs of it. It's all from, it could be anything. We don't want to speculate what happened to him. I will tell you this, he was in the drill, then he walked down to the one-on-ones and he was talking to everybody. He was about four minutes, five minutes and he wasn't doing anything and then he had the seizure. The seizure lasted about four or five minutes, on our watched it was probably about four minutes.
"For all intents and purposes, he couldn't communicate. His eyes were open but he wasn't alert, so he technically lost consciousness."
It was a scare scene for the players to witness. Patterson is one of the veteran leaders on the defensive line and is a player looked up to by a host of teammates. A few minutes into the episode, his teammates gathered around Patterson to help shield him from the sun. When he was eventually transported from the ground to the ambulance, Patterson received well wishes and applause from his teammates, as well as the fans in attendance.
"I have to give Rick and our docs, give them the credit," said head coach Andy Reid. "During chaotic situations like that, they all remain calm. I'm not a doctor or trainer, the players aren't, and that's one of your toughest guys going down. So we were all on edge a little bit and Rick just kind of calmed the situation down. One thing I think he did a phenomenal job with was evaluating it, evaluating the situation in a calm way. Bringing the ER doc in and Dr. Ng working in there and he was calm. I think in the long run there it eased the players down, we kind of gathered them around there because the sun was right beating down on Mike. But they were able to kind of see the operation take place."
Further information of Patterson's status will be given later.
