David Kenney and his family were visiting friends near Brisbane, Australia, when their 9 year old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Leala, came charging towards them.
The dog was soaked and barking loudly. She looked extremely worked up, so David followed her. She lead him to a nearby dam.
When they arrived, David saw something that made his heart stop. His two-year-old son, Alexander, was lying face down in the water.
“It was what I was wishing not to see, it was a mixture of disbelief, horror and sadness, it was indescribable really, but then everything was a blur,” the dad told The Telegraph.
David and his friend performed CPR for 27 minutes until the ambulance arrived. Eventually they managed to get the little boy’s heart working again, but they didn’t know whether Alexander would survive.
Lisa Brockbank, Alexander’s mother, was on her way back to the house when she saw an ambulance rushing by.
She wondered what had happened, but nothing could prepare her for what she would find.
“I didn’t think it was my kid,” Lisa says, and continues:
“I didn’t think it had anything to do with us and then I came to see a helicopter in the sky and the whole place just alive with police and ambulances and my son just lying there completely comatose.”
Staff from the ambulance helicopter pulled Lisa to one side and broke the terrible news.
With his life hanging by a thread, little Alexander was taken to Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Hospital. He was taken straight to intensive care and put into a medically induced coma.
“The doctors said ‘be prepared, you may not be taking this boy home and if you do take him home he’ll probably have some sort of brain damage’,” Lisa says.
Medical staff shocked
It’s any parent’s worst nightmare.
But unbelievably, Alexander woke up – against all odds.
Both his parents and the experienced medical staff couldn’t believe it – two year old Alexander had made a miraculous recovery. Within 48 hours, the doctors had taken him off of life support and he could breath on his own again.
His first words after he woke up melted everyones hearts.
“He wanted kisses from us when he woke up,” David says.
“It was quite miraculous that he came back so soon and so clear and fine and unchanged.”
The doctors were speechless over Alexander’s recovery.
It was most likely the quick actions of David and his friends that saved Alexander. Performing CPR on the child so qiuckly meant that oxygen could reach his brain, preventing serious damage.
But David knows that he isn’t the only one who saved Alexander’s life. There’s one other huge hero in this story.
If it wasn’t for Leasa’s fast and focused actions, David never would have found his son in time.
“Without Leala we wouldn’t have our little boy with us today,” David says.
After Alexander left the hospital, life soon returned to normal for the little boy and his parents.
The relieved parents say that their little boy is the same happy an playful little boy that he normally is.
As terrifying as it was, I’m sure that this incident has made Alexander’s parents even more thankful for their little boy.
And they’ll always be thankful to their smart, life-saving dog Leala!
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