Cartier McDaniel’s family gathered to say their final goodbyes to the four-year-old boy in the hours after his heart had stopped beating at the Children’s Hospital Colorado in the US last month.
Some slept in the waiting room when not praying at Cartier’s bedside after doctors told his parents, Destiny Anderson and Dominique McDaniel, it was only a matter of time before his life support machine would not be able to keep his body functioning properly without a heartbeat.
All attempts to restart his heart had failed.
“It was the worst moment of my life. The whole hospital room was spinning. I was shaking. I couldn’t believe it was happening,” Anderson said.
But in nothing short of a medical miracle to Anderson and McDaniel, their young son’s heart began pumping on its own again — 19 hours after it had stopped.
Anderson and McDaniel said doctors told them they did not have a scientific or medical explanation for why Cartier’s heart began beating again. Doctors on Cartier’s medical team were unavailable for comment this week, the hospital said.
But McDaniel said he had a spiritual explanation: “It was God.”
Cartier’s ordeal began on April 8, when he developed a fever that Anderson treated with Tylenol.
“I thought it was a cold and would go away,” she said.
The next day, his condition worsened. His hands and feet became cold, his mouth turned blue, he sweated, dark circles formed around his eyes, and he had difficulty breathing.
He drank lots of water that day and stayed in bed, which Anderson thought was odd because he is usually an active, inquisitive child.
She knew something was really amiss when Cartier wet his bed, she said.
She called the nursing line for Children’s Hospital Colorado which, upon hearing the symptoms, recommended he go to the hospital immediately.
During diagnostic testing for ailments such as diabetes, Cartier’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and doctors couldn’t find a pulse, Anderson and McDaniel said. They said he had gone into cardiac arrest.
They began administering CPR, to no avail. Anderson helplessly looked on.
“The doctors were pressing on his chest,” she said. “I started crying and getting hysterical.”
Medical staff escorted her out of the emergency room.
Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops pumping and blood stops flowing to the brain and other vital organs, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Survivors of cardiac arrest can suffer from brain damage and internal organ injuries, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Emergency room doctors had diagnosed McDaniel with an infection caused by group A streptococcus, or strep A, bacteria. Cartier’s parents said they didn’t know what infection their son may have suffered beyond this description, although strep A can cause various infections from strep throat to scarlet fever.
The condition led to sepsis — the body’s extreme response to an infection — they said.
When Cartier’s heart stopped, doctors placed him on a form of life support in which blood is pumped through an artificial lung, where oxygen is added and carbon dioxide is removed, his parents said.
The treatment temporarily keeps a patient alive even if the patient’s heart is not working, but doctors must determine whether the organs and other parts of the body will recover, according to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta paediatric cardiologist Dr Michael Fundora, who was not involved in Cartier’s care and did not review his medical records.
Medical personnel spent 30 minutes trying to revive McDaniel as his bloodstream was being attacked by strep A, his parents said. Cartier was then moved to the intensive care unit.
“At that point, we’re just praying for the best,” Anderson said.
Doctors told the family Cartier wasn’t likely to survive.
“He was on life support but it was only a matter of time before the machine stopped working,” Anderson said doctors told her.
That night, other family members went to the hospital to say goodbye to the four-year-old, described by his parents as a “natural protector” who looks forward to thrill-seeking adventures such as finding spiders and playing games at the arcade.
“I’m not going to lie, I did have doubts that everything was going to be OK. I’m human,” said Anderson, who has six other children, including three with McDaniel. “I’m thinking, ‘How am I going to tell my kids I’m not bringing their brother home?’
“I was trying to make peace that this may be what God wants.”
Leaning on her faith, she said she asked God to be with her son.
Soon afterwards, Cartier’s heart began beating.
Initially, doctors believed Cartier would be blind because the part of the brain that regulates vision was damaged by a lack of oxygen, his parents said. But doctors later changed their prognosis and said he would retain his vision.
He remains on dialysis and breathing tubes and has undergone multiple skin graft surgeries after the infection deteriorated his skin.
Phoenix Children’s Hospital division chief of cardiothoracic surgery Daniel A. Velez said the quick-moving hospital staff in Colorado apparently managed to provide a level of oxygen to Cartier’s brain that gave him a chance to survive.
“The breathing was somewhat resumed,” said Velez, who was not involved in Cartier’s care and did not review his medical records. “It was a remarkable recovery.”
Velez said Cartier’s long-term prognosis is unclear because the ability of a child’s developing brain and kidneys to rebound is often unpredictable.
He also may have suffered damage to other organs, Fundora said.
For now, his parents said, there’s no timetable for Cartier’s release from the hospital.
Anderson said she blames herself for not taking him to the hospital sooner, as McDaniel suggested.
“If I would have waited any longer, it would have progressed,” she said. “I waited too long.”