There are many reasons to enjoy the summer. We tend to spend a lot of time outdoors and it’s great to get together with family and friends to enjoy some fun in the sun. Unfortunately, there are also dangers that exist with the fun of summer and we need to be aware of them as well. One of those dangers is swimming, especially as far as children are concerned.
Every year, there are more than 1000 children who drown on an annual basis. They can drown in any location but the majority of them do so in the backyard pool. It doesn’t take very long for a child to slip away and fall into a pool. Often, parents don’t recognize the fact that they are missing until it is too late. It doesn’t even have to be a pool, the child could even drown in a bathtub if the parent is not cautious and aware of what is taking place.
Unfortunately, one mother knows all too well that this could happen. Her name is Julia Thrash and she was at home with her daughter because she had the flu.
When Julia got up to use the bathroom, she left her one-year-old daughter watching television in the living room. By the time she got back from the bathroom, her daughter, Jayah was already gone. It was then that she looked up and saw that the back door was open.
She described the feeling is being the worst panic and anxiety and fear and everything all at one time. We can only imagine.
She ran outside hoping to find her daughter playing in the yard but she saw something horrifying. Her daughter was already floating lifeless in the pool near the edge. After pulling her daughter from the pool, she administered CPR and called the paramedics. It is thought that she was in the pool for five minutes prior to being pulled out.
“It’s like your worst nightmare ever coming true, you know you hear about it all the time, and then it’s actually happening in your own house, in your own pool, with your own child.”
When the first responders arrived on the scene they did all that they could to save the baby. She was then transported to the Banner Thunderbird Medical Center, but was declared dead. It’d been a little over an hour since she had been found in the pool. It was devastating and an investigation was even launched by the police department because the death may have been suspicious, making matters worse.
Suddenly, the medical team made a shocking discovery. Even though she had been pronounced dead, she started breathing again.
“I just looked at her like I didn’t understand what language she was speaking, because we had for an hour been sitting there, told our baby was gone.”
The nurses said that they were out of the room talking to the medical examiner and when they came to get the body, she coughed and started to breathe. Her mother said:
“She had a bounding pulse, her heart just started beating, just like that. She had been laying on the table, and she just started beating again.”
They begin working the child again and then flew her to the Phoenix Children’s Hospital. She continued to gain and lose consciousness and her parents were told to be cautious of being overly optimistic. She had been without a pulse for so long that she may have had a hard time functioning.
The mother added, “They really didn’t think that she would ever recover. Kids just don’t recover from drownings. It was awful to sit and see her like that and not know, is her brain going to work? Is she ever going to be okay? Will she ever talk again? Will she ever do anything like she did before? It was tough because we didn’t know.”
In the end, Jayah did make a recovery and there were no signs of brain damage. She still had a long way to go. She had to relearn how to talk, walk and even smile.
A few weeks passed before she was able to go home. Many doctors and nurses expressed their surprise because they hadn’t seen anything like it while working in the medical field.
“I’m just thankful and thankful to God for giving us this gift and to be able to sit here and say to you, I have a miracle, and it’s Jayah. it’s amazing.”
