DENVER — The family of 4-year-old Cartier Anderson is celebrating the miracle of life each day.
Destiny Anderson remembers one day in early April, when her son came down with a fever. The fever never broke, and Cartier had symptoms including lots of sleeping, aches, cold feet and abnormal behavior.
"I called the nurse and told her the symptoms he was receiving, and she said, 'Oh no, he’s breathing tremendously too fast. You need to get to the hospital,'" Destiny said.
April 10, Destiny said, she admitted Cartier into the hospital.
"I honestly thought Cartier had a cold," she said.
Destiny said Cartier has had other illnesses before, like bronchiolitis, so she thought doctors would treat him and they'd be back home soon.
More than a month later, Cartier is still sleeping in a hospital bed.
"I replay it every time I look at him," Destiny said. "And I’m like, 'if had seen this, noticed this? Would he still be in this state?'"
She said doctors diagnosed Cartier with strep throat, which eventually went septic.
"It's a pretty serious condition that usually requires admission to the intensive care unit," 9Health expert Dr. Payal Kohli said. "It basically means that an infection, usually a bacterial infection, has gotten into the bloodstream where it's wreaking havoc on the blood pressure, on the organs. And it can be very severe."
Destiny said Cartier got hooked up to a bunch of machines, including an IV and breathing tube.
"Before I knew it they laid him down and started doing CPR on him and I lost it," Destiny said. "I was like, 'what’s going on? What did you all do to him?'"
Cartier had gone into cardiac arrest. Within 24 hours of their hospital arrival, Destiny said, doctors were pulling together her family to break some devastating news.
"They’re telling you in so many ways your son is gone, but not telling you he’s gone," Destiny said.
Destiny said Cartier's dad, Dominique, didn't want to believe his son was gone. He chose to not pull Cartier off of any machines and "leave it up to God."
Destiny said she stuck by Dominique, believing there was still hope for their son.
"Back of my mind when I put my head down to cry I said to myself, 'he’s not gone,'" Destiny said. "Like I cried, of course, but like, just the tears I feel like my mom wanted me to shed, I couldn’t. Something in the back of my head told me it wasn’t over and that was God."
Cartier's aunt Angela Maduro and grandmother Catherine Reid stayed with Cartier after the news broke.
"At this point, we’ve done everything that we can medically do," Angela said, repeating what doctors told their family. "So at this time Cartier is what we call 'heart dead.'"
Angela said in the moments after the doctors left, her family surrounded Cartier's hospital room with prayers. She said her sister put blessing oils on every surface and her mother, Catherine, prayed loud and hard.
"I’m rubbing his hand and as I’m rubbing the prayer oil my sister put on him, I look up and as I look up, the green line says 'zzhhhup,'" Angela said. "I said, 'Mom, did you see that?' She doesn’t hear me. She’s still praying. She’s praying, clapping her hands."
Catherine said she had felt a presence in the room while she prayed. She said she felt like someone was at the end of the bed that couldn't be seen or heard by others in the room.
"I think God had all the right people there," Angela said.
"The doctor came back in and brought other doctors and he said, 'I have some good news,' and I go, 'I know,'" Catherine said.
Cartier's family said doctors told them his heart had blood clots and put him on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. Angela said at some point that machine was the only thing pumping blood inside her nephew.
"When somebody has sepsis, sepsis poisons the blood. When the blood is poisoned, the organs including the heart can give up," Kohli said. "In this case, it sounds like the actual heart stopped. So in order to keep everything having blood flow, when your heart's not working, they put this young kid on ECMO, which essentially was an artificial heart pump that provided oxygen and blood to all the organs and sort of kept it alive."
Angela said it was more than 14 hours before Cartier's own heart produced a heartbeat.
"I think everybody that was there knows there was something special," Angela said. "I mean it was unexplainable. If you would have felt the energy in the room, it was crazy."
"I’m still in shock today, looking at him," Destiny said.
Destiny said of her seven children, Cartier is the "peacemaker."
"He always wants you to be OK," Destiny said. "Like if you’re OK, Cartier is OK."
Destiny said in the last month, Cartier has improved greatly. He's seeing, he's answering questions and his streptococcal infection is nearly gone.
"His eyes tell it all," Destiny said. "Him opening his eyes is amazing, because he wasn’t."
Still, Cartier's family said he has a long way to go before being fully healed. His aunt set up a GoFundMe to support future medical expenses and support the family as Dominique has lost his job, having to spend so much time at the hospital.
More than anything, the family is asking for continued blessings and prayers, since those are part of the reason they believe Cartier is still with them today.
"Nobody understanding why, but we know," Destiny said. "It was God. That’s it. No ifs ands or buts. It was Him."
Kohli emphasized the importance of treating infections early and quickly. She said that can help prevent the further development of worse symptoms.
"If you've got a high fever associated with a sore throat or any other signs that it might be a bacterial infection, it's never a bad idea to reach out to a child's doctor, make sure that they don't need antibiotics, because the infection treated early and aggressively can prevent many of these types of complications, especially in our young kids who may not always be the most vocal with their symptoms," Kohli said.
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