[♪♪♪]
During the day, Colton was feeling a bit of asthma
and it wasn’t until later on in the evening
that he woke up in the middle of the night
and he was really having trouble breathing.
It was about 3 a.m. when we got to Children’s Hospital.
We got up to the counter
while we were standing there, he collapsed
and I yelled out for help.
A fellow came, grabbed him with one arm
and a whole bunch of people showed up
and they started CPR on him right away.
When he went unconscious I was just in shock,
and seeing them do CPR,
'cause I know what that means,
there’s no pulse and he’s not breathing and...
Once that started to happen, I realized that I had to phone Rachel right away.
The first words that came out of his mouth were,
“It’s bad, it’s really bad.”
I’d never felt that kind of shock before in my life. It was...
Definitely scary.
So I said “OK, I’m coming right away”
and trying to keep it together as much as I could
by telling myself, he’s at Children’s Hospital, that’s the best place for him.
It took about 15 minutes of resuscitation and then
first going into the ICU was such a shock
to see him hooked up to so many machines.
You know, he was sedated at the time,
they had a tube down his throat and
it was just a scary thing to see.
and...
you know...when he left, he was Colton
and then,
it’s just terrifying seeing your child like that.
[♪♪♪]
It never crossed my mind
that...
he had lost oxygen and would
have a brain injury.
[Dr. Meckler]: The brain is quite dependent on a supply of oxygen and sugar
glucose
and if it’s deprived of either
for more than three to five minutes,
you can start to see some effects similar to a stroke.
They took him off sedation
and immediately he started
talking and his voice was slurred
and we thought ok, he’s just sleepy from the sedation
but then, we noticed the deficiency
on the left side of his body and we still were optimistic.
Then after couple days then he kind pretty much lost everything,
he had, you know, a tube for feeding,
he couldn’t speak, he was,
it seemed like he was nearly blind.
Once the asthma was stabilized,
then we moved on to Sunny Hill.
The role at Sunny Hill was to rehabilitate him
and that’s sort of when we started to see him
progress instead of regress.
It was amazing, the progress that he was having there.
He went from, you know, not being able to eat or see
to, all of a sudden now he’s sitting up in bed
and now he’s standing.
[Colton]: Hey
[Therapist]: It's beautiful, easy peezy.
[Colton]: I'm working at it.
[Therapist]: You have!
He was very motivated, like he was...
I’ve never been so impressed by somebody in my entire life.
Never complained, just – this is what it is.
We thought it could be
three months, six months, a year, they couldn't tell us.
that’s one of the reasons we were so amazed
that he recuperated so quickly.
He’s an amazing brother,
he’s five years older than Naomi,
seven years older than Brielle
and they missed Colton.
I picked him up and brought him home
and it was just, it was exciting for Colton too.
We’re hoping to get him back to...
Just back to living a normal life again, back to the things he likes to do.
He has a tremor in his hands, so...like Lego,
which is his favorite, doing that,
his hands are really shaky.
My name is Colton and I’m 11 years old.
On a scale of one to ten, I like Lego a 20.
Children’s Hospital?
They are…
Means everything
They are everything to us, they saved our boy.
We knew from early on that that was the only place to go.
They’re amazing!
When he was back,
Dr. Meckler came in and he said
“This is why we do what we do.”
[Dr. Meckler]: I think it truly is one of the rare miracles.
We were just very fortunate to
have everything happen in the right place at the right time.
[Colton]: I’m very grateful for everybody
who donates because it gives people
a second chance to live,
like me.
[♪♪♪]