‘Help! My baby!’
When a toddler falls in an icy pool, rescuers go to every length

By Kimberly Sherman

When a tragedy strikes in a child’s life, the horrifying moments begin to pass like still snapshots strung together in his parent’s consciousness.

January 8, 2009, was a typical day in the Pendergraft household. Two older brothers were inside playing video games and watching cartoons while 18-month-old Christian was in the garage helping his mommy sweep.

There are two doggie doors in Christi Pendergraft’s garage. Each is the perfect size for a small, curious boy to squeeze through. One leads into the safety of the home, while the other goes into the backyard.

When Christi heard the ker-plunk of the doggie door, she assumed Christian was going back into the house to find out what his brothers were up to. It was a cold day in January, certainly not ripe for toddler-carousing in the backyard.

But Christian had a different idea. In the pool floated a ball, its round shape and pretty colors beckoning to the toddler. In an instant, the world of the Pendergraft family was turned upside down.

“A friend of mine, Mike, was helping me rearrange furniture, and he asked me where Christian was. Immediately, he went outside, while I searched inside. Suddenly, Mike met me in the doorway of the garage with Christian, wet, in his arms,” Pendergraft recalls. “He was blue, with no pulse, and he wasn’t breathing. From the time I heard the doggie door to the time he was found, five to seven minutes had gone by.”

Pendergraft remembers the sight of her blue baby and the next several minutes passed by like sharp snapshots. “Mike started CPR, but he wasn’t sure what he was doing. I ran inside to call 911. Then I took off running across the street where a retired sheriff’s officer lives; I figured he would know what to do. His truck wasn’t there, so I ran to the neighbor and pounded on the door screaming, ‘My baby! Help!’ She realized that it was me and came over to take my two older boys and niece.”

“Mike was able to get some water out of (Christian’s) nose and mouth doing CPR. He got his eyes to flutter, but he wasn’t able to restart his heart,” laments Pendergraft.

Theresa Lovero, captain of Engine 52, B shift for the Visalia Fire Department, and her crew, Tony Colbert and Nick Branch, were the first on scene. “We got there in four minutes and found that someone was doing resuscitative efforts on the floor of garage,” says Lovero. “We took over and had the airway established and ready to transport within six minutes. The boy had no pulse, was not breathing, and his color was purplish blue.”

Christi held her composure until the first responders arrived. “I was sitting next to Christian in the garage when I heard them pull up. I walked into the backyard to let the operator know they were there. Then I just broke down in the backyard.”

Paramedic Eric Sparshott and EMT Robbie Bowers arrived within two minutes in their ambulance, to find the fire department performing CPR on the limp toddler.

Dealing with a tragedy involving a child sets a different tone and an accelerated pace for first responders. “Everyone gets a little more worked up when it’s a kid,” says Sparshott. “A lot of us have our own kids, and I would do everything I possibly could to help out another kid.”

 “I love fighting fires,” Lovero says. “But when you get the call where you can really make the difference in someone’s life, it’s all worth it. We’re here to help people in situations where if we don’t do something, they’re going to die.”

Christian’s “heart wasn’t beating,” recalls Sparshott. “I started doing some ventilation, breathing impulses, and compressions. We kept the airway open and put a cardiac monitor on the baby to monitor his PEA, or electrical activity. There was no blood flow, so we continued performing CPR.”

It was a blessing that Christian fell in the icy water in the middle of the winter. Cold water near-drownings have a better outcome because the blood is shunted in the body, and the oxygenated blood stays in the brain. Christian’s core temperature dwindled to a mere 85 degrees.

“We cut the wet clothes off the baby, got a blanket and started warming him,” said Sparshott. “I had my partner go to the ambulance and get an I.V. line going. It was all team work. Everyone knew their role and what to do.”

After inserting an I.O. line (an I.V. needle put into the bone when a vein is inaccessible), the crew started rounds of epinephrine, a medication designed to speed up electrical activity and enable the heart to begin pumping. Two rounds of medication were administered, and Christian’s heart started beating on the way to the hospital, approximately fifteen minutes after he first slipped into the chilled water.

First transported to Kaweah Delta Medical Center, Christian had another team on the “baby car” from Children’s Hospital racing to transport him back to the facility, renowned for saving children’s lives. Christian still wasn’t breathing spontaneously. He was on life support and relied on medication to regulate his heartbeat. When Christian arrived at Children’s Hospital, Christi was informed that on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst, Christian’s lung capacity was at nine.
 
The doctors at Children’s Hospital were quick to assure Christi that Christian had many factors working in his favor, but they also warned that his recovery hinged on his willingness to fight through his predicament. Christi braced for the real possibility that her son would not survive.

“The first three days were really hard. I didn’t want to get my hopes up on the positive steps he was making until after he was taken off the life support for his heart,” remembers Christi. “Then I felt that he was going to make it. The baby I had before was going to make it”

Christian remained in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of Children’s Hospital for one week, followed by one week of in-house rehabilitation. Christian has been given a clean bill of health. He will have some speech therapy this summer, followed by a precautionary neuropsychologist visit in six months.

After the trauma, Pendergraft says she has seen only a slight change in her son’s behavior. “It almost seems like nothing happened,” she says. “I was sitting on the side of the pool (and) as soon as Christian got to where the pool decking starts, he decided to go around it.” Pendergraft herself has learned a valuable lesson through her son’s ordeal. “I’ve learned to enjoy the precious moments—to stop and take the time to actually enjoy them rather than letting them pass by.”

Of three drownings, this was the first of Lovero’s with a positive outcome. “We made multiple follow-up calls to the hospital. During one call, they said there was no brain activity. During the last call, they said that he was no longer a patient,” recalls Lovero. “We went by the house to make contact with family, expecting the worst. They came by the fire station that night, and Christian had made a full recovery with no deficits at all.”

“He was a bubbly little 18-month-old, just like any other kid you’d see.”

Pullquote:
“The boy had no pulse, was not breathing, and his color was purplish blue.”
—Capt. Teresa Lovero
Engine 52, Visalia Fire Department

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