The family of a 4-year-old boy who had resigned themselves to saying goodbye after he spent 19 hours without a heartbeat cannot explain his sudden return to life, which also left doctors speechless , last month.
“We were just praying for the best. He was on life support, but it was only a matter of time before the machine stopped working. (…) I wondered how I was going to tell my children that I was not bringing their brother home,” Destiny Anderson, the young boy’s mother, told NBC News on Thursday.
On April 8, little Carter McDaniel found himself bedridden with a high fever, which his mother thought was a common cold, when his condition suddenly deteriorated in their home in Colorado.
The little boy surrounded by sweating and struggling to breathe, while his hands and feet would have become cold, while his mouth would have taken on a bluish tint, the mother continued to the American media.
After listing the symptoms at Children’s Hospital Colorado, the nursing line allegedly advised him to immediately go to the scene, where the boy allegedly suffered a cardiac arrest during one of the diagnostic tests.
“It was the worst moment of my life. The whole hospital room was spinning. I was shaking. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The doctors were pressing on his chest. I started crying and became hysterical,” the boy’s mother continued to NBC News.
The boy would then have been placed on a respirator to keep him artificially alive while the affected organs were assessed. He was reportedly diagnosed with an infection caused by streptococcus A bacteria causing him sepsis.
The more the hours went by, the slimmer the child’s chances of survival became, to the point where family members would have come to the scene to say goodbye, the American media reported.
But after 19 hours on the machine, the boy’s heart started beating again, leaving doctors perplexed, according to NBC News.
What’s more, despite the lack of oxygen in the region of the brain which regulates vision and which could have made him blind, little Carter would have retained his sight, said his mother, grateful to life.
However, he will need several skin grafts, damaged by the infection.
Each year, between 300,000 and 450,000 Americans die of cardiac arrest, while severe sepsis affects more than 75,000 children, including 7,000 fatally, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics, reported by NBC News.
