My journey of healing begins

Brayden suffered a near drowning on April 12, 2008. He was 16 months old.


Brayden was playing in the backyard with his sister Kaitlyn, they were jumping on the trampoline while I was cooking out on the grill. I went inside to take the food in and set the table so we could eat. When my daughter came in the front door, I immediately said, where is your brother? She said she didn't know we both ran out the back door. I scanned the backyard screaming his name. I asked Katilyn where is he at, she said I dont know maybe he fell in the pool. I looked in the pool I couldnt see anything at first the water was dark green and coated with a thick layer of pollen. Then on the other side of the pool, I saw his little blue and orange tennis shoes. He was floating face down in the water. I immediately ran to the other side of the pool and pulled him out. He was not breathing, I threw him over my shoulder and ran to the deck where CPR was started. My daughter ran inside to get the phone so I could call 911.

When EMS arrived he was still in full cardiac arrest. The EMS took him inside the ambluance to work on him and someone came out and told us that things did not look good for him. EMS continued CPR and after giving him Epi/Atropine his pulse finally returned they had a heartbeat of 38. He was intubated by EMS due to still not breathing and once stablized enough for flight he was flown to Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite. He had to be given more cpr and epi/atropine 2 times en route to the hospital due to his heartrate dropping really low. When he arrived at the hospital he was put on a ventilator and his body temperature was 80.06 F, they had to get him warmed up. He was admitted to the PICU for further care.

He had 2 CT scans done 1 of which showed a very mild disturbance of gray matter-white matter differentiation. His MRI showed that he had hypoxic ischemic injury with decreased diffusion involving the thalamus and hippocampal formations. The Neurologist said that he would have some deficits due to his brain injury but we really will not know what has been affected until he wakes up. Brayden remained on the ventilator until April 16th, he was taken off of the ventilator and put on oxygen by nasal cannula. He started having respiratory distress and was given racepinephrine treatments and started on methadone for possible withdrawl symptoms from the sedation used while he was intubated. He was started on a high flow oxygen by nasal cannula. He did well and was being weaned down on his oxygen. Sometime during all of this they thought he possibly had a seizure and they started him on Keppra to prevent seizures. On April 22 he started having respiratory distress again, work of breathing, increased heart rate, and blood pressure. On April 23 he was re-intubated and put back on the ventilator. On April 27 he was taken back off of the ventilator and tried again on the nasal cannula. He did well for the first day but that night he took a turn for the worse and almost had to be reintubated again.On April 28th, after talking with Brayden's doctors the decision to put in a tracheostomy was made. A PEG tube for feedings was also done at the same time. It was found that Brayden had acute inflammation with swelling of his sub-glottis area and active granulation tissue partially occluding the subglottis. Brayden made it through his surgery fine and now has a trach and G-tube. He has to be sedated and paralyzed until they do his first trach change. Now our journey of healing begins.


Brayden's Diagnoses:
Near drowning/Accidental drowning
Anoxic Encephalopathy
Generalized-onset seizures
Acute Respiratory failure
Surgeries: tracheostomy and G-tube