Loretta Gillespie
CNHI
CULLMAN —
On a quiet, sultry summer evening the unthinkable happened in a small suburban subdivision in Good Hope, Alabama.
People were firing up their grills, packing their cars for the upcoming Fourth of July weekend, mowing their lawns- or just relaxing on a calm Friday night. Mothers could be heard calling their children in for supper. The time was 6:30 p.m.
The Echols family was preparing for a big yard sale. Wendy was gathering items to be priced, Ray was cutting some vinyl lettering for his sign shop - their four children were playing around their lawn.
“Where’s Chandler,” Wendy asked the older children.
Seventeen-month-old Chandler, the baby, had been shadowing his mom all day, as usual. What was unusual was that he’d seemed to take notice of the ornamental koi fish in the family’s decorative pond that afternoon.
“I’d had to pull him away from the pond twice that day, so when I missed him I immediately felt that something wasn’t right,” recalled Wendy. “I stopped what I was doing and immediately told everyone start looking for Chandler.”
Although she had never seen Chandler play around the pond until that day, the first place she looked was the fishpond. “There he was, floating with his head down in two and a half feet of water, “ she recalled with obvious difficulty. “I started screaming and jumped into the water.”
Chandler, his little face already purple from lack of oxygen, was unresponsive - Ray started CPR immediately.
Wendy had the presence of mind to call out to her 12-year-old daughter, Chelsey, instructing her to call 911. Neighbors who heard the frantic, piercing cries from down the street came running to help.
“It didn’t really take the ambulance very long to get there, but they went to the wrong end of the sub-division, and someone directed them to us,” said Wendy.
One of those neighbors just happened to be a nurse at Children’s Hospital. When the ambulance crew got Chandler’s limp body loaded onto the stretcher, she assisted them in getting a tube down the small airway - supplying his brain with much needed oxygen. “They found a slight pulse then,” recalled his mom.
The nearest hospital was Woodland. “At this point, I was in shock – this was just unbelievable,” said Wendy. “We were at Woodland for about two hours before we could even see him.”
In full panic mode by this time - shivering in wet clothes -Wendy waited with the family to find out her baby’s fate.
When they finally saw their child, he was no longer purple, but a frightening chalky, white pallor covered his entire body.
They hospital staff worked hard to stabilize Chandler. They knew he needed to be taken to Birmingham, but the special ambulance necessary to transport him was busy with another emergency. Four more precious hours elapsed.
A medical helicopter based in Muscle Shoals was called. It headed their way, even thought a sudden summer storm had blown up. “The weather was awful, they shouldn’t even have been in the air, but then knew my son’s life depended on them – so they came,” said Wendy, softly.
Flying below the swirling gray clouds, the helicopter pilot navigated toward them, flying just above I-65. Time was slipping away for Chandler.
“They were such caring people, they knew this was a life and death situation,” said Wendy of the flight crew.
Someone brought Wendy dry clothes. They jumped in the car as soon as Chandler’s still unresponsive body was loaded into the helicopter. Heading to Birmingham, they prayed. Around 12:30 a.m. on July 2, 2005, the Echols hurried into the Emergency Room at Children’s Hospital. “We still didn’t know anything at that point,” she said.
The family waited in the room where no one wants to go. “ They put us in the room they use to tell people bad news,” remembered Wendy. “We might have dozed a little, but we couldn’t sleep – not knowing if he was going to make it or not.”
At this point, Chandler was,’neuro-storming,’ a tightening of the muscles, making his hands turn outward, and his nerves contract.
For six long days the family still didn’t know what Chandler’s prognosis was. Finally, on July 6, one of the many doctors assigned to the baby’s case came in and told them that he would live. “It was my birthday, and I thought this was the best gift I could ever be given,” said Wendy.
In ICU, they had been able to visit for just a little while at a time, but they hadn’t been able to hold Chandler. “He had tubes and monitors coming from everywhere,” recalled his mom. “He continued to neuro-storm, and it was scary.”
Monitors sounded day and night, recording his vital signs. One day when his grandfather was alone with him, Chandler reached up and tore his breathing tube out. “My dad was the most scared of all of us to be in the room alone with Chandler,” recalled Wendy. “He was terrified, but then Chandler took a breath - the first one on his own since the day of the accident.”
Although the doctors and nurses had told them that what they saw now was what they could expect Chandler’s life to be like, Wendy and Ray took heart from experiences like the one with the breathing tube.
Even thought they were rejoicing at the news that Chandler would live, the realization that the nightmare wasn’t over slowly began to sink in.
“Ray was the questioner - he asked the same questions in different ways- trying to get answers that would give us some idea of how Chandler was doing,” said Wendy.
At the end of the second week, Chandler was moved to the Special Care Unit. There, for the first time, Wendy and Ray could hold and try to give their baby some measure of comfort. “ Children who are neuro-storming are tense - a bundle of nerves,” Wendy explained.” It was as if he knew that we were there. You could almost feel that he wanted to cuddle. I sensed his body relax when the nurses, who were holding all the tubes and cords, put him in my arms.”
In their off- hours between taking turns in the hospital, they searched online for some hope for a miracle.
“When I was pregnant with Chandler I had read an article about stem-cell research. It told about banking babies cord-blood for future use,” remembered Wendy. “I asked my OB/GYN doctor about it, because something in that article really interested me.”
Her doctor dismissed her question, saying only that it was a really expensive process. In the back of her mind, Wendy never forgot that tid-bit of information she had read. Now it became vitally important to her. After 30 days they were able to take a still unresponsive Chandler home.
Jackie took a leave of absence from her job as Operations Officer at Premier Bank in Cullman. When she returned to work, she realized that her place at this time was with Chandler, so she turned in her resignation.
Chandler moved his toe one day after Wendy finished his physical therapy, and within the next couple of days, he had moved a finger. Around this time, Wendy was alone with her son one day when she saw him smile for the first time in months. She was overjoyed.
The rehab doctor, Charles Law, was amazed when he saw Chandler afterward. His progress from that time on was steadily improving. “He could turn his head, move his fingers and toes, things were just taking off, “ said an excited Wendy. “These were big accomplishments for us.”
The family had noticed that Chandlers hearing had become exceptionally keen. It made them think that he might have lost some of this other senses. Sure enough, he had lost his sight, hence the blank stare they had become accustomed to. But, after the first year, he even regained his sight.
He could roll over, stand with weight on his legs, and ride the Am-Trikes tricycle that they were able to get for him.
Ray works long hours- Chandler’s care has been a huge expense, even though the family is grateful every day that they are able to afford some insurance to help cover part of the mountain of bills they have incurred. They continued to search the internet and every lead that they found about possible treatments for their child. One day, they stumbled on the name of a doctor in Sarasota, Florida, who had some success with injuries of the type Chandler suffered.
“We contacted 81-year-old Dr. Burton Feinerman and he told us that we could come down for a consultation,” Wendy said.
The entire family made the nine-hour trip, hoping against hope that they would find help at the end of the trip. When they pulled up in the parking lot, a distinguished-looking gentleman walked up to their van introducing himself as Dr. Feinerman. “ We liked him right away, he was so down-to-earth, and after looking at Chandler, he told us he felt he could help.”
“He explained the progress his other patients had achieved due to his research with stem-cell technology,” she said. “He didn’t make any great promises, just explained that if the treatments worked, we would almost immediately see a small improvement in Chandler’s motor skills. After a year, there should be even more improvement. If the first treatment worked, a second would be given to help Chandler even more.”
The treatments are called Donated Stem Cell Injections. The stem cells are donated from the umbilical cords of live healthy children and are received from the cord banks in the United States. Stem Cell Therapy is the only treatment that has shown promise in regenerating brain cells in patients with similar injuries to Chandler’s. Unfortunately, these treatments cannot be done locally, and the family is forced to travel to Lima, Peru.
The initial cost of the treatment is $25,000. The price does not include the cost of travel and for Chandler or his family.
The family is now raising money to help defray the cost of the procedure. They need $30,000 for the first treatment, which includes travel expenses - and even more it there is to be a second treatment. Ray is involved in martial arts, so the Echols are holding an American Xtreme Combat (AXC) Mixed Martial Arts Show at the Cullman Civic Center this Saturday, August 21, at 7:00 p.m.
Cost of admission is $20, all of which will go into a fund that has been set up in Chandler’s name at Premier Bank.
‰ To find out more about the fund raiser, or about Chandler Echols, you can visit the website at 4UChandler.com and Chandler's Miracle on Facebook.
