In early December in 2015, Mireya Rodriguez had just arrived home from work with her 14-month-old son Sebastian, who just recently started walking. Mireya’s 11-year-old daughter was in the living room with her cousin at the time, so Mireya asked the girls to keep an eye on Sebastian while she prepared dinner for everyone.
About 30 minutes later, Mireya called the girls to bring Sebastian into the dining room for dinner. “I could hear them, ‘Where is he? where is he?’” Mireya recalls of the moment she realized her son had wandered off.
“Finally my niece yelled, ‘He’s over here,’ and found him face-down in the Jacuzzi,” Mireya recalls of the terrifying moment Sebastian was discovered in the family backyard. “She pulled him out and I started giving him mouth-to-mouth. Then one of my neighbors, a retired nurse, rushed over and took him from me to begin CPR as we waited for the ambulance.”
When the EMT arrived Sebastian didn’t have a heartbeat and was rushed to the nearest hospital. Medical staff worked on Sebastian for 46 minutes minutes until seeing signs of life again.
Thanks to his new Special Tomato chair, Sebastian sits at a table for the first time since his accident. “He was so happy and I could tell he was very proud to be included with all of us at the table,” Sebastian mother told us.”
“After forty-six minutes, I could see that the nurses were crying and they said, ‘There’s a heartbeat!’” Mireya recalls. “And they brought him back after forty-six minutes.”
“The amazing thing is that they nurses didn’t stop working on him,” said Liliana Rodriguez, who lives with her sister, Mireya, and Sebastian. “They knew he was gone, but they could not let themselves stop, and that made all the difference in the world.”
It’s been almost six years since the accident and, today, Sebastian has severe developmental delays and struggles to meet many of his milestones due to the severe anoxic brain injury he sustained. “He does not walk or talk, but he’s there,” Mireya said. “He understands. He’s very aware of everything.”
Right after the accident, Sebastians’ vocal cords were completely paralyzed and he was only able to breathe using a tracheostomy tube. However, three years later his vocal cords had repaired themselves and he can now breath on his own.
With all things considered, Mireya feels Sebastian is a healthy and happy boy. Since he’s not able to communicate verbally, his school is getting him an eye-gaze device which will allow him to communicate simply by moving his eyes to a specific part of a screen. For that to be useful, he’ll need appropriate seating, which is where Holton’s Heroes was able to help.
We granted Sebastian’s mother $600 so she could purchase a Special Tomato chair (pictured here) that allows Sebastian to sit with the family at dinner, at a desk or just comfortably in the living room with his family. It travels well, can be cleaned easily, and has a special mobile base that makes moving possible.
Additionally, we purchased Sebastian a special floatation device to use in the water, especially at home in the family’s pool. This device is made is Australia and is typically always denied by insurance, even though it offers such great therapeutic benefits to brain injury survivors like Sebastian.
As always, we thank all of the donors who helped make these gifts possible. Thank you for being a hero. If this story inspired you to help, you can donate here.
“He had no heartbeat for 46 minutes, so he’s a little miracle.”
Check out some of our other heroes from this year
“Tonight, we feel the power of humanity in a bath chair. Go figure. Some people feel excited about cars and other luxuries, but here I am just wanting my boy to be bathed safely,” Joshua mom wrote to us after her son received his gift from Holton’s Heroes.