Baby’s miracle tale of survival
Little Santiago Iglesias is just one of the 1500 people Life Flight helped make it to Christmas this year. Felix Desmarais reports.
Santiago Iglesias looked OK at first but it wasn’t until his hood was pulled back that the ‘‘fist-sized dent’’ in the newborn baby’s head was revealed.
Accidentally injuring your own child is every loving parent’s worst nightmare, and that is exactly the horror Kylie Price went through on July 15.
Price was carrying her then 7-week-old baby son Santiago, or ‘‘Santi’’, in a front pack on a ‘‘gentle stroll’’ through the Remutaka Forest Park, across the harbour from Wellington, when she tripped and fell – forward.
‘‘I was just walking along and the shoelace from one side of one shoe caught. It was just like being tackled.’’
Holding hiking poles and wearing a heavy backpack, Price tried to flip onto her back but only managed to turn 90 degrees, landing hard on her left-hand side.
She felt Santi’s head hit something.
‘‘That’s a feeling I can’t get rid of. It’s a gross feeling.’’
Santi was crying but he wasn’t screaming in pain.
‘‘He had a little cap over his head, so I pulled it down and he looked fine,’’ Price said.
‘‘[Then] we saw a little fistsized indent on his skull, like he’d landed on a rock.
‘‘It was red. The skin wasn’t broken but his head had this massive dip on his left parietal.’’
But other than the ‘‘dip’’ in his skull, Santi was ‘‘responding fine’’. He was normal.
‘‘My husband went 10 different shades all at once. He went purple, green, yellow like he was going to pass out. The fear in his face still sticks with me.’’
Price’s husband, Federico, immediately started running back down the path, until he found somebody to help.
Price was struck by how many people were willing to help the young family, who also had 2-year-old daughter Sienna in tow.
‘‘People just dropped everything for us.’’
But there was no phone reception, and the couple did not have a personal locator beacon.
‘‘About 20 minutes before the fall, we were talking about how we needed [one]. We’ve got one now.’’
Then one person found a bar of signal reception on their phone.
‘‘We called emergency services, and really soon we were on the phone . . . the signal came in and out and we could hear
them the whole time but they couldn’t hear us,’’ Price said.
‘‘They said they were going to send a helicopter which was like, ‘oh man, amazing’. Fifteen minutes later, you could hear them coming.’’
There is a wobble in Price’s voice when she recalls the sound of the helicopter approaching.
‘‘Relief. Such huge relief. It was like, ‘oh thank God, they’re here’. Because you just didn’t know. It was really full on.’’
Once at Hutt Hospital, Santiago’s skull was scanned and Life Flight’s services were again needed, this time to get the infant on the Air Ambulance to Auckland’s Starship children’s hospital for surgery.
‘‘We didn’t have to worry about anything, it was so seamless,’’ Price said.
Surgeons restored the baby’s skull. It was thought his age and the softness of his skull contributed to his good outcome.
Price said she was normally a private person but she wanted to give back to Life Flight by telling Santi’s story.
‘‘Everyone needs to know about them and the service they provide. You never know when you’ll need it, I never thought we would need it,’’ she said.
‘‘Who knows what could have happened if they weren’t there for us.’’
Today, cheerful and smiley Santiago is 7 months old and about to experience his first Christmas.
‘‘We’re so lucky, he’s got no consequences from the accident whatsoever. He’s going to be absolutely fine,’’ Price said.
‘‘He’s awesome. He’s the happiest little kid. He’s really bubbly.’’
Four people need the help of Life Flight every day. Life Flight is a registered charity that relies on donations to keep running. Without it, the life-saving service would struggle to exist. You can help muck in by donating at www.lifeflight.org.nz/support-us.