Parents want nothing more than to know that their children are healthy and happy. Whenever children do get sick or suffer from serious health complications, Fayetteville parents oftentimes put their complete trust in pediatricians and other medical professionals to properly diagnose and treat their children so that they can get better.
However, the parents of a 7-year-old boy who was hospitalized last month discovered that doctors can make serious medical errors when they are too quick to assume that one’s medical condition is untreatable or if they fail to employ all measures to resuscitate a patient.
On Feb. 18, the boy’s parents noticed that their child’s breathing was abnormal and called 911. The child was rushed to a hospital where doctors made attempts to resuscitate the child. Within an hour of arriving at the hospital, doctors said that the child had suffered cardiac arrest and that he had died. Refusing to believe that their son was dead, the parents stayed by the child’s side and demanded that staff continue to work on saving their son. Several hours later, a heartbeat and pulse were found.
Some have called the incident a miracle, but the boy’s parents are not so convinced. They believe that their son had been alive the entire time and that staff at the Chicago hospital had given up on finding a heartbeat and pulse too soon.
Shortly after the parents were told that their son was dead, they noticed that their child’s chest was still moving. When they showed doctors that their son was still breathing, they were told that the movement was just a side effect from a medication that had been administered when trying to resuscitate the boy.
While funeral employees were getting ready to take the boy’s body from the hospital, the parents pushed doctors to continue to make an effort to find the child’s pulse. Finally, an ultrasound revealed that the child’s heart was still beating. The hospital claims that its staff followed the proper protocols when attempting to resuscitate the boy. However, the family does not understand how staff could have pronounced the child to be dead when he was still alive hours later.
Source: ABC 7 News, “Heartbeat, pulse found after boy pronounced dead,” Sarah Schulte, Feb. 22, 2012