When 10-month-old Phillip Simmons gets to an age when he can understand, his mother Mary Hunstein has a story to tell him about the day his life was saved when he was only four weeks old.
Mary was a busy mom that fateful morning in April when she went to check on Phillip and his twin brother James, Jr. after naptime. James was screaming at the top of his lungs, ready to eat, but Phillip’s head was turned to the side, he was pale and his lips and fingers were blue. Mary grabbed him and called 911.
“I stayed on the phone and they instructed me to keep him awake and stimulated so he would keep breathing but he wasn’t breathing normally,” said Mary. “When rescue arrived a few minutes later they put him on oxygen and drove him to Wolfson Children’s ER at Baptist Clay.”
Because the pediatric ER at Baptist Clay is staffed with pediatric emergency specialists from Wolfson Children’s Hospital, they were fully equipped to handle the situation. Children and babies are physically different from adults due to their size and how their bodies react to illnesses, injuries and treatments, so having staff specializing in pediatric emergency medicine as well as smaller equipment can make a huge difference in a child’s outcome. Kids have smaller blood cells, making lab work different, and they have less blood, meaning labs must be set up to get results with smaller samples. X-ray machines are calibrated differently at Wolfson Children’s Hospital and the Baptist Clay Medical Campus so children are given smaller doses of radiation when getting an imaging test.
Currently, there are more than 5,700 hospitals in the United States, but less than 250 are children’s hospitals that specialize in pediatrics (like Wolfson Children’s Hospital does). The Institute of Medicine, an independent research organization, reported that fewer than 6 percent of hospitals have the pediatric supplies needed to properly treat a child – and children make nearly a third of all ER visits annually. That’s why a parent can be assured that only a Wolfson Children’s ER – the one in Jacksonville and the one in Fleming Island – is affiliated with Wolfson Children’s Hospital, the only pediatric hospital in the region.
In Phillip’s case, having a pediatric ER nearby with a doctor who is board certified in pediatric emergency medicine may have saved his life. Mohammad Aboudan, MD, was on duty at the Wolfson Children’s ER at Baptist Clay the day Phillip came in and said his first course of action was to secure his airway. Phillip was transported via Kids Kare Mobile ICU to Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, where pediatric critical care physicians and other caregivers ordered extensive testing that included bloodwork and brain function assessment. Because he battled to breathe on his own, Phillip was put into a medically induced coma to take the burden off of his lungs as doctors tried to find a cause.
Ten days later when he came out of the coma, he was able to take his own breaths and all tests came back normal. In the following weeks, sleep apnea was ruled out. What caused his health crisis is still up for debate and could have led to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) if his mother hadn’t noticed his symptoms and called 911. Today he’s a healthy, thriving little boy.
“It’s certainly an unusual case,” said Dr. Aboudan, “but taking into account his age and dire condition when he came in, I’m sure that having a Wolfson Children’s ER at the Baptist Clay Medical Campus that specialized in pediatric emergency medicine made a huge difference in how well he has done.”
Phillip’s mother, Mary, agrees.
“The incident hasn’t set him back at all, and I believe it’s because the doctors and staff of Wolfson Children’s Hospital were there for him,” said Mary. “They understood how to deal with my baby better than any other hospital would have because they know children are different than adults, and have experience taking care of them. It’s because of them that Phillip survived and is living a normal life now.”
Wolfson Children’s Hospital is the only hospital just for kids in the North Florida and South Georgia region, with two specially staffed ERs in Fleming Island and downtown Jacksonville geared toward treating the special needs of children, from birth to age 18.
Thank you to Wolfson Children’s Hospital for sharing this story and sponsoring this post.
