The family of a 4-year-old boy whose heart stopped beating for 19 hours said they gathered at Colorado Children’s Hospital in the United States to say goodbye to Cartier McDaniel. It was last month. Doctors told the parents, Destiny Anderson and Dominique McDaniel, that it was only a matter of time before the life support machine would not be able to keep the boy’s body functioning properly without a heartbeat.
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All attempts to revive his heart failed. “It was the worst moment of my life. The entire hospital room was spinning. I was shaking. I couldn’t believe this was happening”, recalls the mother. But what they call a “medical miracle” happened — Cartier’s heart started beating on its own again, 19 hours after it had stopped. According to the parents, doctors said there was no scientific or medical explanation for why Cartier’s heart started beating again. But, for the father, the explanation is spiritual: “It was God”.
Cartier’s ordeal began on April 8, when he developed a fever. “I thought it was a cold and it would go away,” said the mother. The next day, his condition worsened. His hands and feet became cold, his mouth turned blue, he sweated, dark circles formed around his eyes, and his breathing was labored. He drank a lot of water that day and didn’t get out of bed, which Anderson found strange because he is usually an active and curious child. She knew something was really wrong when Cartier wet the bed.
She called the hospital and was told to see him immediately. During diagnostic tests for conditions such as diabetes, Cartier’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and doctors were unable to find a pulse, Anderson and McDaniel said. The boy had a cardiac arrest. Doctors began administering CPR, to no avail. “The doctors were pressing on his chest,” she said. “I started crying and getting hysterical,” she recalls.
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Medical staff escorted her out of the emergency room. Doctors diagnosed McDaniel with an infection caused by group A Streptococcus bacteria, and the condition led to sepsis – the body’s extreme response to an infection. When Cartier’s heart stopped, doctors placed him on a life support system in which blood is pumped through an artificial lung, oxygen is added and carbon dioxide is removed, the parents explained. The treatment temporarily keeps the patient alive even if the heart is not working, but doctors must determine whether organs and other body parts will recover, said Michael Fundora, a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta who was not involved in the studies. care of Cartier, in an interview with NBC News.
The medical team spent 30 minutes trying to revive the boy. Cartier was then transferred to the intensive care unit. “At this point, we were just praying for the best,” Anderson said. Doctors told the family that Cartier would likely not survive. “He was on life support, but it was only a matter of time before the machine stopped working,” he says. That night, other family members went to the hospital to say goodbye to the 4-year-old boy. “I’m not going to lie, I had doubts that everything was going to be okay. I’m human,” said Anderson, who has six other children, including three with McDaniel. “I was thinking, ‘How am I going to tell my kids that I’m not going to bring their brother home?’” he says.
“I was trying to accept that this was what God wanted,” he recalls. Leaning on faith, she said she asked God to be with her son. Soon after, Cartier’s heart began to beat. Initially, doctors believed that Cartier would go blind because the part of the brain that regulates vision was damaged by the lack of oxygen, but they later changed their prognosis and said that his vision was not impaired. He remains on dialysis and breathing tubes, and has undergone several skin graft surgeries after the infection deteriorated his skin.
Daniel A. Velez, chief of the division of cardiothoracic surgery at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, said the quick team at the hospital in Colorado apparently managed to deliver a level of oxygen to Cartier’s brain that gave him a chance to survive. “Breathing has, in a way, resumed,” said Velez, who was not involved in Cartier’s care. “It was a remarkable recovery,” he added.
Velez said Cartier’s long-term prognosis is unclear because the ability of a child’s developing brain and kidneys to recover is often unpredictable. He may have also suffered damage to other organs, Fundora said. For now, his parents said, there is no timetable for Cartier’s release from the hospital. Anderson said he blames himself for not taking him to the hospital sooner. “If I had waited longer, I would have progressed,” she said. “I’ve waited a long time,” she finished.
