IF I DIDN’T KNOW CPR, MY DAUGHTER WOULD BE DEAD
Carly Brown, 36, from Blyth, Northumberland
Rubbing my 17-month-old daughter Summer-rae’s back as she coughed, I sighed. ‘It’s OK,’ I soothed. One morning, in July last year, I’d gone to wake Summer and her twin brother Dillan, and noticed she was sick.
When she coughed, her chest rattled and she looked lethargic.
I gave her some Calpol then put her back to bed, and I went to check on her an hour later.
But as I peered into the cot, I realised she was struggling to breathe. Her lips were turning blue. I started to panic. ‘Ryan,’ I screamed frantically to my partner. ‘Call an ambulance!’
Scooping up Summerrae, I ran downstairs.
The 999 call handler was on loudspeaker.
‘Does anyone know CPR?’ they asked.
For a moment we looked at each other blankly. ‘Oh my God, I do,’ I said. I used to be an air hostess, and I was first aid trained.
Instinct took over as I started doing compressions on Summer-rae’s tiny chest.
I was still shouting out reps and breaths when the ambulance pulled up.
It felt like a lifetime, but it had only been a few minutes.
‘It’s OK, we’ll take over,’ a paramedic said gently.
I was in shock and Ryan was beside himself as our baby was bundled into an ambulance. As we pulled up at the hospital, I ran in after Summer-rae.
‘We’ve got a heartbeat,’ the paramedic told me, and I felt myself relax.
But then a doctor ushered us into a side room. He explained she had been in cardiac arrest for 22 minutes, she had sepsis and a blood clot.
Her little brain had been starved of oxygen.
After what felt like forever though, Summerrae was stabilised.
She spent 10 days in intensive care. Slowly but surely, she beat the odds.
Summer-rae spent three months in hospital recovering from her ordeal and she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
She just went for a nap one day, and now she was a different girl.
I struggled to get my head around it, and I couldn’t believe her heart had stopped from a cold.
But Summer-rae was a fighter. She was discharged from hospital, and went from strength to strength. The twins are now 21 months old, and Summer-rae is doing so well.
I’m beyond grateful our little girl is still with us, and it’s all thanks to CPR. If I hadn’t remembered how to do it, Summer-rae wouldn’t be here now.
Every parent should know how to do it.
You hope and pray you’ll never need it – but if you ever do, it will save your child’s life.