I didn't know the number one cause of children's death in the USA is drowning aside from heart defects. My superman experienced both. Fortunately he had life saving surgery as a baby that repaired his heart and after have one of the most normal childhoods there was an accident 4 days before his 3rd birthday. Lucas went missing, he ran down the road with his cousin Wyatt to get rocks with a dump truck, while we were searching for them on the property not thinking they would run off to far they made it so far down the road no one could hear me screaming when I found them. Wyatt came running down the road say "he feel in the river, he dead he dead!!" I started telling Wyatt to shut up he's not dead and show me. I told Nicholas not to leave the car while it was parked in the middle of the little dirt road with the door open. I called nick told him I found Wyatt and what Wyatt told me then I told him to tell his mom, she was still at the houses looking, I ran down to the creek screaming for help the entire time, once I got to the creek I gave Wyatt my phone and told him to go back to the car, I'm not sure if he listened but he knew not to come in the water, I started running down the creek searching the water thinking he might have sunk down to the bottom but after a few minutes I saw something white down by the creek, that was the longest minute or two of my life. I kept falling and struggling to get to him. Once I got to him I lifted him out of the water and carried him to the side so I could start CPR. While I was doing this I noticed his blue face, the bruises all over his head from the rocks, his clothes where soaked, his shoes gone. It was the worst moment of my life. After what seemed like hours but may have only been 20 minutes of CPR nicks mom and brother showed up with Nicholas and Wyatt in the car. She was crying asking if he's ok. I told her "he's dead" she screamed "no". Brigham (nicks brother) came running down the creek with what looked like such ease he took Lucas to the car and handed him to a stranger that just happened to hear the screams. Brigham came back to help me. I was soaked to my shoulders from falling and slipping on such sharp rocks, I was in shock and couldn't hardly move. Once I got to the car I stated CPR again. 911 had been called by then but it still took about 10 min for someone to get there. Once the cop showed up he took over CPR. After the ambulance came about 4 more trucks and SUVs came to help save my little boy. We left to the hospital a little but latter and once we got there they started working on him in such an intense way people yelling for things, trying to intubate him. After a little while longer nick and his dad got there.
After working on him for about 30-45 minutes they got his heart beat back, and after the doctor told us it doesn't look good we finally got a pulse and he started trying to breath on his own. We were so sure that meant he would be ok. He left for lifeflight to Vanderbilt children's in Nashville so we had to get a ride home to pick up our car and we grabbed some of Lucas's clothes too thinking he would come home at some point. The little boys asked if he was dead we told them "No he's just sick". We rushed to the hospital and finally got to see him after waiting FOREVER!! He was unconscious but looked so good! He had color!!! People came to visit him make sure everything was ok, we sang to him, told him how much we loved him, begged for him to move!
HE GRABBED NICKS HAND FIRST THEN MINE!!! I was so excited!!! The doctor said that he isn't responding to pain so they don't "know" why exactly he will squeeze our hands but not respond to pain or his pupils won't redoing to light. They just kept saying it doesn't look good but we were sure he would be fine. After a while his heart couldn't handle to stress anymore, his organs weren't responding so good anymore and his heart was beating out of whack. They told us that it will be like this (the continuous crashing) until he dies, or we can stop doing what were doing and you can hold him.
So we held him.
At 3:52am on February 19 2013 we lost our superman. The toughest little guy in the whole world was gone.
