Friends, we have turned this one post "public" as so many of you have asked to share it. The purpose of this post is to save lives, so please, share aggressively! It is our story and we share it so that anyone you can touch can turn a potential nightmare into a celebration of life!
It has taken me three weeks to write the following words… On June 27th, my three year old daughter, the light of my world, would have died if not for the heroism of my wife and our 12 year old son.
I hope I have your attention as the events I am about to tell you for days of the aftermath, put me into the “shakes”. What was to be a vacation of vacations was indeed for several hours, the worst nightmare of our lives. For those who don’t know our family that well, it is important to preface this tale by stating some facts:
1.) My wife and I have five small children between the ages of 1-12
2.) We have lived in many places
3.) We have had babies in the NICU at birth for weeks
4.) My wife has had five C-Sections and five 10 pounders (hero already!)
5.) We had a baby who needed open heart surgery to build the walls of his heart at 5 months when he went into heart failure
6.) We have had our share of visits to the emergency room with Pottery Barn coffee mugs cutting one of our son’s knees like sushi to magic wands harpooning the back of one of our son’s mouths when his toddler brother shoved him down two steps when he was dancing with the wand in his mouth
7.) We have seen croup from more ‘barking seal children’ than we would dream on our worst enemies
8.) Had our son misdiagnosed at Cedars Sinai with a rare and deadly blood disease
9.) I have performed Heimlich on my eldest when he choked on a hot dog in a restaurant
10.) Had my 18 month old vomit sweet potatoes in my mouth
11.) Learned a few weeks ago our baby will need more surgery
I state this not to say we have had it worse or better than others, but simply to state that we have seen our share of “battle”. Nothing in the hilarious and treacherous past of parenthood could have prepared us for 15 minutes that certainly altered all of our atoms as a collective family of seven. To anyone who reads our story and thinks, ‘that will not happen to me’, let me be very frank, unless, everyone in your family is prepared, it most certainly could happen to you. If you let your guard down, it could happen to you in moments and not minutes. We are a family obsessed with safety. Especially water safety. Our children, just like you, are everything to us. I trained each of our older three boys (12/10/6) to swim at very early ages. The older two boys (swim team pros) could swim a mile comfortably before the age of 8 and our six year old is a proficient freestyle swimmer with rotary breathing. Our home in Fairfield County, sits by a river and we have life vests, helmets and other protective gear everywhere. We “get” water.
Our family had the wonderful opportunity to become “expats” this past winter as my company wanted me to come and help run marketing for Europe. We have lived in NY, Seattle, Los Angeles and CT and jumped at the opportunity to give our team the adventure of Europe. One of the fantastic upsides still in the EU is that they take their vacations very seriously. Time off and with family is to be cherished and respected, something not quite as prolific in the US. So, when we moved to Luxembourg in December we did what all Europeans do, we began to plan for the day our children’s summer vacation hits. We looked at all of the extraordinary places and decided on Corsica, a rugged and glorious Island off the coast of Southern France and practically kissing Italy and the island of Sardinia.
We decided to book two weeks on Corsica, one week in a rustic villa in the mountains surrounded by fresh water rivers that you can ride and equipped with a glorious pool. This was the first home we have stayed in where we had a pool right off the main house and we spent days discussing prior to our arrival how we would handle safety. We decided on a combination of new equipment, several different types of vests (some for safety and others for swimming). We also chose a home that had a sensor on the pool so that when you are not in it, it automatically turns an alarm on so even if a beach ball or toddler’s hat falls in, the alarm sounds through the house and all run to see what has fallen in due to wind. During the first three days of our trip of a lifetime… water guns, balloons, underpants and sunglasses all sounded the alarm with each of us gasping, counting “role call” all-seven-accounted-for-and-none-in-the-pool, and then we would send one of our swimmers down to retrieve the fallen, non-human alarm offender.
I had a routine with my only daughter, three, which was to make breakfast, do the dishes and then blare the soundtrack to Moana whilst she would wear her floaties and learn to swim in the pool with me as her Maui (Moana’s sidekick and trusted Demigod). She could jump in, go under, swim back and pull herself out of the pool already under a routine we called “jumpy jumpy, uppy wuppy, flippy dippy, outty woutty”… yup, I am so hip!!!
Why should Tuesday be different from Monday or from Sunday? Because it was and for a few moments, we all let our guards down. I was doing the dishes with my wife in the kitchen with clear view of our two older boys doing laps and our daughter sitting on a lounge chair waiting stoically for her Maui (Papa) to go on a water adventure. One minute later, (that’s all it takes) my wife and I heard a ringing scream for “help” from our eldest.
Looking out the kitchen window our minute earlier vision of a perfect day had turned into a nightmare as our pint of a boy was miraculously holding our lifeless, purple-bodied-with-hair-of-curls-forever sister on his tiny shoulder as he tried with little avail to lift her out of the deep-end of the waters with no leverage. She was drowning.
I swept our one year old into my arms and my wife and I began a slow-motion horror show to the patio.
My wife pulled our girl from our young son’s arms and immediately yelled to me to call an ambulance---I grabbed the boys and sealed them in a room with our one year old baby and started to search for the 911 equivalent in Corsica as my wife began a supernatural act of bringing our daughter back to life.
Finding cell phone signal in the remote center of Corsica is next to impossible. Finding it with hands shaking, visions of a coffin and your angel inside it is beyond impossible. The only thing that kept me going was the image of my valiant wife pumping away at our daughter’s chest and saying “No, No, C’mon Amelie…” over and over again. I pulled apart the kitchen, found the emergency pamphlet that the owner of the villa had given to us and realized it was full of doctor’s numbers and NOT 911 equivalents. I punched myself in the face, I AM NOT KIDDING AND THIS WAS NOT THE LAST TIME I DID THIS ON THIS MOST NIGHTMARISH DAY---and thought my daughter is blue and unconscious. How long can she last until help arrives??? She could already be dead, ‘My daughter could already be a vegetable’ ran over and over again in my bruising brain as I continued to speak to Corsican ONLY speaking answers to my frantic phone calls for help. I texted fatefully the owner as one of my flares for help and said simply “AMBULANCE NEEDED NOW!!! DAUGHTER UNCONSCIOUS. DROWNING”.
I waited for the signal to push the text through as I saw my daughter vomiting, but she was still that blue, purple and so bloated... “Help is on way” texted back at me as I told my wife and the two of us continued to sob as we thought she is gone, probably brain gone at least and then my super hero wife surged and continued to pump, breathe into her tiny mouth, lift, turn and pump and then…
And then, Just like that, she vomited a second time and the blue turned to the most beautiful shade of pink on my daughter’s lips, flowers, blooming, like the newborn from the womb, my daughter who was lost, so lost at the sea of our cruel Corsican pool was found again through the extraordinary efforts of my wife. Born twice. She began to moan and was fighting for her life now too… ridding water and anything else from anywhere that would exude it. My wife wrapped her in a towel and immediately started to keep her conscious by asking her simple questions. “What’s your name?’ “How old are you?” “Where’s mommy?” “Grab mommy’s hand”
Even three weeks later, there are moments when I hear my daughter’s voice that I burst into tears and say ‘thank you to my wife and son… thank you’. We were not out of the woods yet as first the ambulance was heard whining in the long, hot distance. My daughter and wife were then swept up in a rescue helicopter with Maui tattooed emergency workers stating the ultimate truth to my wife, ‘You saved your daughter today, you were the doctor’, they immediately gave our girl an IV, her oxygen was at 92 and she was breathing calm at the scene but they put a mask on to keep her stable. They got to the hospital in 10 minutes, by ambulance or car it would have been close to 2 hours.
When I can soberly now look back at the logs of calls and texts during those fateful minutes, it is so clear that courage and CPR saved our daughter’s life. Emergency help took over 15 minutes from our first contact with humans until we actually had a vehicle in our driveway administering oxygen. 15 minutes. Our baby girl explained to us that she threw the pool alarm keys in the pool and then jumped in to get them. Contrary to what we all think of drowning (someone screaming and waving their arms), it is silent, there is no splash or scream or arms waving, it can happen with people right there and in seconds. Amelie’s lungs filled with water and within moments she turned blue and was splayed out on the top of the water as most drowning victims do. Facts: The body stores oxygen near the brain to give the body a fighting chance to survive and protect the brain from injury. Most drownings occurs under supervision because there is no one with the skills to perform CPR until professionals arrive. Secondary drowning is less known but no less deadly a cause of drowning.
Secondary drowning? What is that? That is when the victim of near drowning does not realize that their lungs have not truly been purged and instead of going to the hospital and being treated, the victim rests up with their family, usually develops a cough and high fever goes to sleep that night feeling fine and drowns in their sleep from water filling their lungs, extremely rare but happens. I had only heard of this just prior to our trip on one of the many texts my wife had sent me about water safety. The doctors immediately treated our daughter at the hospital in the ICU to prevent secondary drowning and subsequent pneumonia which she had due to the near drowning from bacteria getting in her lungs. They did however point out that on her first x ray she did have not have a drop of water left in her lungs, again CPR. She did develop a fever from the pneumonia which was immediately treated with antibiotics and never developed a cough. In fact, she was eating strawberry ice cream, whole kiwis and singing in the ICU and charming the entire Corsican staff mere hours after the near drowning. It was a tiny hospital and we think every worker, doctor to janitor came to visit her. After spending 2 days in ICU and then one in the children’s ward of the hospital, my daughter who I sat guard next to for 3 days was released. And like that, the jaws of death dissolved.
My wife explains what took her over was a combination of Joan of Arc, the strength of Super Man (when he turns back time to save Lois Lane from the earthquake in the only good Super Man –with Christopher Reeve) and she added that God was with her as well. I think these are all plausible and accurate descriptions, but the truth lies simpler and deeper. My wife was prepared with the basics of CPR which she had learned years ago and to which we had had a “brush up” course on when our baby was sprung from open heart surgery. But equally important, my wife simply did not give up. One minute, two minutes, three minutes and beyond… She worked on our daughter, that bruised blue, and so lifeless like an overblown balloon and she did not allow any fact imagined or real about whether our daughter was indeed still alive, had internal bleeding due to CPR thrusts or brain functioning to get in the way of her job, which was simply to keep working until all hope was lost. My wife still cannot sleep well after that image but slowly she is seeing her daughter change to pink in the scene in the movie that now plays in her mind. She also has deep mourning for mommies who actually lose their baby to an accident, she said our girl's vomit on her clothing was a comfort, it was life.
The first week of what was to be the greatest vacation of our lives was indeed an exercise in “treading water”. As my eldest (also a hero who asked to return to the house with me) and I went back to that fateful home to remove our belongings and clean vomit and scrub shit from the floor of the pool patio, I had a moment of total clarity. June 27th is to be a day of celebration for our family for all time. A life was almost lost, but saved. A family learned the meaning of going home as seven and what that truly means. We salvaged the second half of our vacation at Villa #2 and somehow found music, laughter and to the delight and amazement of all, our daughter begging to get back in the water, which she did with her Maui.
Friends, family, colleagues, those you share this to, remember that hope is not lost, everyone in a family who is old enough can save a life. It takes less than a 30 minute course to save a life. Download one, ask your pediatrician’s office and at the very least go to YouTube to stream the basics. Whether you save your own family, a child your child is babysitting for or a stranger’s life, anyone can make that difference. Know what you are doing. Do not give up once you start and help arrives. 15 minutes is a death sentence without the work my wife did to restore her oxygen prior to their arrival. If you do not give up and take action, you can most certainly save a life. I have my little girl back because of this. Sign up yourself and your whole family and you can turn a moment that would have destroyed our lives into an annual day of celebration. (Also, this was not a party, no one had lost anyone, parents were doing dishes after breakfast, everyone was accounted for, it was a beautiful morning, we both checked on our daughter, it was moments not minutes. Know what to do and do not simply “like” this and move on. Make sure that your whole family and or friends are prepared.)
As I think of my wife on the patio floor working on our angel, one part Saint Joan, a hint of Super Man, but mostly pure Mom, I remember that Kate Bush song This Woman's Work...
“Pray God you can cope
I stand outside this woman's work…
I know you've got a little life in you yet
I know you've got a lot of strength left
I know you've got a little life in you yet
I know you've got a lot of strength left”
http://cpr.heart.org/AHAECC/CPRAndECC/FindACourse/UCM_473162_Find-A-Course.jsp
http://www.redcross.org/take-a-class/cpr
Fr
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