The child who nearly drowned and who was extubated by order of the court finally came home on Monday. The family are crying out for a miracle and hoping that God will step in again to allow the six-year-old boy to see, talk and walk.
“My son is alive and well!” “, said the mother of the child who would have liked to hold the press conference on her knees, in front of the Sainte-Justine hospital, to thank God.
“When he came out of the pool, he had no vital signs. After the maneuvers, he showed some signs of life, but that was not reassuring. We were told he wasn’t going to spend the night,” said the woman, whom the court is preventing us from naming to protect her son’s identity.
“Today, my son, he has been alive for 309 days. It is enormous. We have reached more than 7,000 a few hours of life for someone who did not even have to spend a night, ”she said, surrounded by about twenty members of her family and her Protestant church. All held up posters with messages of thanks to God.
It is that last June, the child fell into the family swimming pool while he was under the supervision of his grandmother who did not know how to swim. She herself almost drowned trying to save the boy. The cub remained underwater between 15 and 20 minutes before neighbors came to pull it out of the brown water.
At Sainte-Justine Hospital, doctors and parents had a disagreement over the patient’s treatment plan. There were signs that the child could breathe independently. The doctors therefore proposed to remove the patient’s endotracheal tube. The family wanted the boy to be reintubated in case of failure. According to the medical staff, reintubation would have led to too many risks of complications.
A Quebec Superior Court judge finally authorized the doctors to proceed with the treatment plan last November. The family appealed the case and a judge again authorized the doctors to stop the mechanical ventilation, which was done on February 16. The child has been able to breathe on his own since then.
Despite the differences, the mother wanted to show her gratitude to the staff who cared for her son. She admitted that their exchanges have not always been easy. “I love them, all the staff. I can only say thank you to them. They were there for our son and they will be there to accompany him. I always ask God to give health to the staff so that they can take care of all the children in the hospital, because it is very heavy work,” the woman explained in a sincere voice.
She would not give details of her son’s condition, saying only that he would still need care once he was home. A doctor from the Montreal Children’s Hospital, who was consulted for a second opinion, however, said that the boy would have “no thoughts, no hearing, no vision, no intentional movements […] ] he will never walk/talk/feed”.
However, the six-year-old’s father said his condition is “getting better every day”. “When he hears voices, he reacts… he turns his head. He opens his eyes. We don’t know if he sees, but he rolls his eyes. You can feel him reacting,” the man said.
Asked if the child would be able to talk and walk again, the father suggested that the doctors’ prognoses were grim, which did not seem to discourage him.
“God, he is mighty. He does miracles. [My boy], he’s going to talk. It’s going to work,” he said as the rain started to fall.
