{"id":5091,"date":"2018-05-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prd-www.mccdn.io\/vitals\/?p=5091"},"modified":"2023-03-02T15:03:51","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T15:03:51","slug":"4-year-old-survives-25-foot-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/updates-www.mccdn.io\/vitals\/4-year-old-survives-25-foot-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"4-year-old survives 25-foot fall","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

By Cheryl Reid-Simons<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jessica Voeghtly took clothes from the dryer, put them on the couch and sat down when she heard what sounded like something hit her back door. The busy mother of three got up to check, expecting maybe a stunned bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cI opened the door and saw my son laying on the ground, unconscious with blood everywhere,\u201d Voeghtly says.<\/p>\n

In that instant, an ordinary laundry day turned into the most terrifying of her life. Her 4-year-old son Hunter had fallen from a second-story window onto the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went into mom mode, scooped him up and started rubbing his back because he wasn\u2019t breathing,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAll of a sudden he took a deep breath and started screaming in pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few minutes earlier, Hunter had been playing and helping her change the sheets on her bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe and the cat were playing on the bed and I told him to take the cat into his room while I got clothes out of the dryer,\u201d Voeghtly says.<\/p>\n

But the cat and Hunter had other ideas. Hunter followed the cat onto the windowsill. The window was open about three inches. It never occurred to Voeghtly that her preschooler would even try to open it all the way. But he did and, apparently assuming the screen would hold him in, leaned into it and fell 25 feet to the ground outside the back door.<\/p>\n

Had his mother not heard it and found him immediately, things could have been much worse.<\/p>\n

Voeghtly called 911 and the operator told her to lay him down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was blood everywhere and I didn\u2019t want him to choke on it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

So she propped him on the couch. Since she couldn\u2019t call her husband, Anthony, while she was talking to the 911 operator, she snapped a picture of Hunter with her phone and texted it to him with the message, \u201cGet home now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In hindsight, she says she wishes she would have done it differently. But in that moment, \u201cI wanted him to be there for Hunter.\u201d<\/p>\n

In less than five minutes, paramedics were in the house. They scooped him into an ambulance and were en route to Mary Bridge Children\u2019s Hospital three minutes later.<\/p>\n

It was an agonizing ride with Hunter alternating between seeming to lose consciousness, vomiting and calling for his mom, Voeghtly says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really shocked when we got there,\u201d she says, comparing the arrival to previous emergency room visits. \u201cI had never had so many people just waiting to care for him. I\u2019ve been to other hospitals but never saw anything like this. There were at least 20 people waiting to take care of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Hunter and his mom rode in the ambulance from Puyallup, the Mary Bridge care team, alerted by paramedics to Hunter\u2019s condition, assembled quickly and were ready to greet them. The team included doctors, nurses, a social worker and lab technicians, Voeghtly says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey helped calm me down,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The Mary Bridge team quickly assessed Hunter\u2019s condition and diagnosed him with a small skull fracture, bleeding between his skull and brain and fractures on his cheekbone and upper lip.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said it was a small fracture on his skull,\u201d she says. \u201cBut when I look at the X-ray it looks huge to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team carefully checked for spinal damage and found none.<\/p>\n

Besides what the Mary Bridge team did for Hunter, Voeghtly is grateful for their efforts to keep her and his father informed.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody was so calming and understanding and when the doctors were in there talking their doctor talk they were also explaining what they were talking about,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Hunter went to the ICU for 24 hours, then to a regular room, and about 48 hours after arriving at Mary Bridge, he was on his way home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had the nurses laughing in the ICU,\u201d Voeghtly says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t want him to leave because he was so funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Hunter, who by then was feeling self-conscious about his swollen-shut eye, was ready to head home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis first smile was on the way home from the hospital,\u201d his mom says.<\/p>\n

Coming home for the first time since the accident, Hunter\u2019s parents immediately installed safety locks on all the upper-story windows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t open more than two inches,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In under a week, Hunter was jumping around, resisting efforts to keep him calm while he recuperated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin two weeks, you\u2019d never have guessed he was in such a horrific accident,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Voeghtly says parents whose children experience such a traumatic accident need to give themselves some grace.<\/p>\n

\u201cKids are going to be kids,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can\u2019t do the \u2018what ifs.\u2019 I did a couple \u2018what ifs\u2019 and I had to tell myself to cut it out. I was making it worse and I had to focus on how to get Hunter better.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a crisis, stay as calm as you can and get the help your child needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s OK to ask questions,\u201d she says of dealing with a child in the hospital. \u201cAnd it\u2019s OK to be scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tips to prevent window falls<\/h3>\n