Miracle boy comes home
Published: June 16, 2005
A group of anxious relatives waited Wednesday afternoon in the arrival area of St. John’s International Airport for the first glimpse of a wheelchair and a little boy who they all describe as a miracle child.
As passengers arrived from the CanJet flight from Toronto and Halifax and proceeded to the baggage area, the anxiety mounted until finally the little boy’s smiling face could be seen peering down from the second level through the clear glass elevator walls.
Eight-year-old Cody Holloway, accompanied by his mom Judy and father Jimmy, was welcomed back home with balloons, gifts, hugs and kisses.
“I can’t talk about it,” said Judy, the emotional pain obvious in her expression and voice, when asked if she wanted to comment on what Cody had been through. “His father can talk to you,” she said.
Jimmy said doctors at the Izaak Walton Killam (IWK) Hospital in Halifax told him his son is a miracle. “They said he should be dead. They don’t even know how his heart restarted.”
Thursday, May 12, started out as a normal day for Cody and as usual in the afternoon he went to an after-school program a short distance from his home, run by the St. John’s Boys and Girls Club, at the Buckmaster Circle Recreation Centre.
Jimmy said Cody was playing with another child inside the building when somehow a hockey net and frame in the room fell across his chest and knocked him unconscious.
When Cody regained consciousness, he said, someone from the program walked home with him.
When his parents realized he had been injured, they took Cody to the Janeway hospital where he was admitted and hospitalized for two weeks.
Jimmy said the blunt force of the hockey net and frame actually crushed Cody’s chest, causing an aneurysm in a blood vessel going to the heart and related heart attacks.
“They thought his heart was swelling up, but it was an aneurysm,” said Jimmy.
The Janeway allowed Cody to go home for two days but a severe pain in his chest sent him back to the hospital.
“At the hospital, he took another pain,” said Jimmy, “and when they did an EKG (electrocardiogram) on him, he took another heart attack.”
“The next day they gave him a dye test and they saw the big aneurysm and rushed him up to Halifax by air ambulance,” his father said.
Jimmy and Judy couldn’t get a flight themselves that night and had to rely on phone contact with the hospital to monitor Cody’s condition until they joined him at IWK the following day.
That day, the first of June, Cody was in surgery for about eight hours.
Jimmy said doctors had to put two patches on a hole in his heart because the first one didn’t take. ”They were lucky though because they thought they would have to do a bypass,” he said.
As a result of the surgery, Cody has developed another complication, from a pinched nerve in one leg, which will now require therapy to help him walk again.
But his spirits at the airport Wednesday appeared high. Although he was short of words, he had smiles for everyone in his welcoming party.
When asked how he was feeling, he replied, “good.”
“He’s just anxious now to get out of here and get home,” Jimmy said.
His recovery will take a while, said Jimmy. “He can’t do anything for the whole summer. The next six to eight weeks, he’s got to take it easy, no strenuous work whatsoever and mostly a lot of physio now on his feet and his leg.”
Christopher Pickard, executive director of the St. John’s Boys and Girls Club, said Wednesday the boys and girls club will do whatever it can to support the Holloway family.
“We do see this as an unfortunate accident that could have occurred anywhere,” Pickard said.
“Our thoughts and concerns are with Cody and his family. We will help with whatever support we can give them and to help with fundraising for him and we hope to see him back in the program.”
Pickard said he feels strongly that the level of supervision and quality of programs offered by the club are of high calibre.
The staff on site have first-aid training and are “diligent and committed to our kids,” Pickard said.
Jill Brewer, director of the City of St. John’s recreation department, said Wednesday she was also aware of the incident.
However, she said, while the Buckmaster Recreation Centre is owned by the city, “It’s a rental facility for us. We don’t do any direct programming there.”
The city provides support to the St. John’s Boys and Girls Club but the club is directly responsible for its own programming activities in its rental agreement with the city, Brewer said.
“Obviously we regret this from happening by all means. Anybody’s safety is very important to us as a city and we take all the precautions we can,” Brewer said.
She said the city has gone out of its way to instruct all user groups to only use equipment appropriate for the activity and the age group of children in their programs.
“From our perspective our equipment is in fact safe but has to be used with care and supervision,” Brewer added.
Meanwhile, a benefit dance is planned for Cody’s family Friday, beginning at 8 p.m. at the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 1, Blackmarsh Road.
His aunt, Janice Carew, said money raised will help offset some of the family’s medical and travel expenses.
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