Preparing for the Miracle

It’s the same as all the other stories you hear: It all happened so fast, We were all right there when it happened, We thought we had taken the right precautions... but he drowned anyway. We had been swimming all morning. We intended to get the kids tired out so that we could work on cleaning the house. My parents were coming home from California that night. They had been gone for over a year and my family had been living in their empty house for the last three weeks. My family. The one with 6 little kids. It needed cleaned badly! So we were playing hard, getting the kids wore out so we could get quality naps. Lunchtime came around and that’s when our "proper precautions" started to wear thin. Adults and kids started going in and out of the house: Can you get the mustard, We need more cups, I need to go potty! Life Jackets and Swimmies came off so as not to drip too much water through the house, and there was such a hunger need that no one was put in charge of getting them back on again. I had no idea that he wasn’t in his life jacket. When I saw the top of his little head in the water I remember thinking, “I’m so glad we got that new little jacket! He is swimming so well with it on!” It was so fast. We were all right there. 15 feet away. I had thought we had the right precautions in place. But he drowned anyway. 

     The three year old saw him first. He knew something was wrong and started to drag him to the steps. There his big sister, who is five, grabbed him. They weren’t yelling or screaming, just dragging him in. I saw them next, and I remember thinking that’s not what it looks like. It can’t possibly be … I started yelling at my husband to get him out. He ran over and the five year old handed him over to Dad. I remember yelling the most intense prayer of my life, “Oh God, NO! Not my Ammie! Please, please not my Ammie!” Over and over again. His body was limp and blue. His eyes were glazed over. No one ever told me about how his eyes would look. His body looked so small, like some horrid rubber doll hanging limp in his father’s arms. When I ran up to get him, he smelled like vomit. Of course Dad handed him to me. I had had the most training. I knew we had to start CPR immediately. But this was so different than training. He was so small. How do I do compressions on a chest this small? His entire chest fit in my two hands.

     Somewhere away from the chaos going on in my head, I heard my husband telling his mom to get all the rest of the kids in the house. That made sense, we didn’t want them in the way. And someone yelled to call for 911. I started compressions. Immediately there was water, so much water. Water came out his nose and his mouth. He was completely full of water. I kept going, compressions, rescue breath, compressions. The water stopped. At some point I looked up and my husband was standing there watching, and I remember yelling at him, “Call 911!!” He told me his phone was so old it was taking a minute to bring up the phone app. Stupid phone! Compressions, rescue breath, compressions! I started to hear Ammie’s little voice. Little sighs that sounded just like him, but weren’t really him. I remember the CPR instructor talking about that. Patients can start making vocal sounds while you are performing CPR, but it’s just the air going through their cords. I hadn’t thought about how the sounds he would make would be made in his voice. It sounded just like him. I remember thinking it was going to be the last time I would hear his little voice. Don’t stop! Compressions, rescue breath, compressions! I started to notice he was changing color. He wasn’t so blue, his lips were starting to pink up. That’s when I realized my knees were burning on the concrete. If I was going to be able to keep going, I had to get off the patio. I picked him up and ran inside. I started CPR again, but I started to notice his pink color spreading. His heart had started again. I did a couple more rescue breaths and his chest started to rise and fall on it’s own. He was breathing! The 911 operator told us to roll him on his side so that if he starts to vomit he wouldn’t aspirate it. Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that. It wasn’t long before the first fireman arrived. He came in and started listening to Ammie’s lungs with his stethoscope. He still had water in his lungs, so we tried to rouse him. That’s when he vomited. Another big batch of water. It was a good sign, but he still wouldn’t rouse. He was just so tired. Another couple of minutes and the EMTs got there. They ran in and the female EMT grabbed him and headed to the ambulance. I looked at my husband and told him to bring clothes because I was still in my swimming suit, and we left. He vomited one more time in the ambulance, and that seemed to clear his lungs. By the time we got to the hospital, the doctors said his lungs sounded clear. Chest x-rays showed that his lungs looked good. He responded to pain, and his reflexes were good, we just couldn’t rouse him. He was so exhausted.

     They said he needed to be kept under observation for the night to be sure that he didn’t have any complications, but the hospital didn’t have a pediatric intensive care unit. So they decided to fly him to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where he would receive the best care. I couldn’t believe how fast they had the helicopter team there to take him away. I wanted to go with them. But they were concerned that the seat belts wouldn’t fit around my 39 week pregnant belly. And so we got him prepped in the seat belt on the gurney, and they took him. They said it would be a 12 minute flight to CHOP. It took us almost two hours to drive. It was the hardest moment for me to watch him roll down the hallway heading to the helicopter. I was completely sick that I couldn’t be with him. 

     When we got to CHOP, a nurse was sitting with him, rocking him. He was asleep, but they informed us that he woke when he got off the helicopter, and his lungs are working well. He screamed in his amazingly high pitched screams and was calling for his dad! They were actually wondering if those high pitched screams were normal for him. They also asked about a red mark that had developed by his eye. He had had a mosquito bite that developed petechiae (those little red spots that can speckle your face from intense vomiting) from the pressure of CPR.  But that was it. His vitals were normal, his heart was normal, he was reacting as he should. He was our little boy, alive and well. Truly, he was a miracle to us. 

     The stress of the day did start some minor contractions for me that night, but with some rest they went away. They kept us overnight for observation, but it was clear that by the next morning he was going to be just fine. He was eating, drinking, and playing with the cool new hospital toys - which was a definite benefit of being in a pediatric unit. Our life, it seemed was going to be able to return to normal, though it would never be the same. I will forever look at him a little differently. I will appreciate his smile and laughter, even his high pitched screams, so much more. 

So why is this story important? It started out the same as all the other stories you hear, but our miracle ending was not the result of luck or of an amazingly fast ambulance team, but of training. I received my Wilderness First Responder training as part of my undergraduate degree in Recreation Management. As part of that certification, and recertifications, you are presented with many practice scenarios that require you to work through how to care for a patient. You discuss what the patient will look like, how they will act, even the panic or fear of the people around the patient. Working through these scenarios prepares you to act under pressure. I have also served on a search and rescue team that also did training exercises on how to handle stressful situations. With that team, I received the Red Cross Healthcare Provider CPR certification. It was in this higher level CPR certification where I learned about what drowning patients will look like, smell like, sound like. Some how, knowing these things, being prepared for them made me feel more competent, even capable to do what seemed impossible: perform CPR on my own son. 

 

So be trained. Get as much training as possible. Get an advanced CPR certification. The little bit of extra time and money may be the difference of being able to act, and freezing under pressure. I decided because of this experience that I have to continue my first responder training. There is still so much that I should learn! I am so grateful for the courses and instructors that I have had thus far that gave me the ability to not panic, freeze, or give up too soon, but to do what was needed to save my son’s life. 

As an epilogue to the story; As we walked in the front door of our house, Ammie ran in, picked up his life jacket and asked to go in the pool. “Yes!" we said. We went straight into the pool, got the other kids, and made new happy memories of the family playing together in the water. We will be more diligent about our children in their life preservers, but fear will not drive us to abandon activities that provide bonding and a lifetime of fun.

Work hard, play daily, sleep well, be safe. But above all, love every moment of this life.






For Dad's version of the story (including pictures) visit: http://trailheadfamily.blogspot.com/2016/09/whats-worst-that-can-happen.html