It's Life Café time.
After something to jeer, here's something to cheer.
When Chantelle Lavallee fell to the floor and hit her head, Brian Andrade, her husband, called 911 and started CPR. Paramedics rushed to the scene.
“The doctor and the paramedics had said if [Andrade] hadn’t reacted and done what he had done, the outcome would not be the way it was, period,” she said.
“I would have been dead.”
This is City News from Toronto –
Only weeks earlier, when Lavallee was still pregnant, the couple had taken a crash course in infant CPR, which included 10 minutes on techniques for adults.
It was a fundraiser for Jesse Arrigo whose mother used CPR to save him after he fell into a backyard pond in May 2012 when he was 10 months old. He went 55 minutes without oxygen and still needs treatment not covered by OHIP.
“I thank the whole world I took Jesse’s class,” Andrade said. “It was all because of Jesse. He was my inspiration.”This is the The Star.Com reporting Jesse's story –
Without vital signs, he was rushed to the Hospital for Sick Children. His heart stopped twice, but he clung to life, spending weeks in a coma.
For three months, Jesse was in critical condition, and doctors didn’t expect him to survive.
“I’m so proud of him. He’s such an inspiration,” Kristin says.
His story has also lent strength to other families around the world who are coping with brain injuries in children.
Now 28 months old, Jesse is getting stronger by the day on the long road to recovery from oxygen deprivation. “When he drowned, his arms weren’t damaged, his legs weren’t damaged — the injury was in his brain,” said Jesse’s grandfather, Bob Arrigo.
Jesse still cannot walk or crawl but he speaks a handful of words — his favourites include “hug,” “hi,” and the short phrase “I go.” And he has no end of opportunities to use “I go” — Jesse spends his days on the move from one appointment to the next.
His waking hours are filled with treatments: physiotherapy, speech pathology and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, as well as alternative medicine including osteopathy, craniosacral therapy and homeopathy. “His brain is reconnecting gradually, and putting the pieces back together,” Bob says.
Doctors had initially expected Jesse would be both blind and deaf after the accident; wrong on both counts. One room in his home has been converted into a physiotherapy room, with mats and sensory toys to stimulate him. Professional nurses visit in the afternoon to work with Jesse.
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