Miracle: He had a 5 percent chance of surviving, but a Louisiana doctor helped save him

MARRERO, Louisiana. Drowning is the leading cause of death for young children in the US.
Survivors are often left with severe disabilities and brain damage.

For decades, Medical Watch has covered families who come to New Orleans in the hope that treatment can make a difference.
Now another family has traveled nearly 5,000 miles.

Last August, a parent’s worst nightmare: a little boy who was learning to crawl slipped out of his parents’ sight and ended up in a swimming pool. Haimaa remembers her husband’s devastating words.

“I just remember him pulling him out of the pool and saying, ‘That’s it. Ready.’ Your brain just won’t accept it, like there’s nothing in life that prepares you for this moment,” said his mother, Haimaa, who chose not to give her last name.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was performed, Aiden’s heart flinched and stopped. He was on a ventilator. Doctors at the hospital at their home, all the way to Casablanca, Morocco, gave him a five percent chance of life, but in a severely weakened condition.

“The seizures just put him into a vegetative state where he was tube fed for about a week. He had terrible spasticity, dystonic movements, he did not sleep at night, did not follow his eyes, ”she added.

Two months later, on the Internet, Chaimaa found our story at wwltv.com about another toddler who nearly drowned and was being treated with pressurized hyperbaric oxygen. She called Dr. Paul Harch, who had been using and studying these therapies for decades. He recommended that Aiden’s doctors give him special doses of nasal oxygen.

“I have 10 published studies just on the use of intermittent supplemental oxygen for various other types of traumatic brain injury, such as stroke,” said Dr. Harch of Harch Hyperbarics.

However, Moroccan doctors were skeptical, as were other doctors.

“After the first session, and I’m not joking, he became a completely different child. Spasticity completely disappeared, and after the second session he began to follow his eyes. The third smiles. The fourth, laughing, and then he began to communicate with us,” Chaimaa recalls.

They have now traveled over 4,000 miles to undergo several weeks of pressurized oxygen treatment in Dr. Grarch’s cylinders in Marrero.

“There is information that hyperbaric oxygen has a beneficial effect on damaged tissues. The American Heart Association has come forward and endorsed hyperbaric oxygen therapy for acute heart attacks,” noted Dr. Grarch.

The doctors said that oxygen therapy would not help. There are doctors in the US who are also skeptical, but she clearly remembers one visit to the doctor at home.

“His neurologist just literally called all the people who work in his office to come and see him. They couldn’t believe their eyes, and the physiotherapist said, “I’ve never seen such a miracle in such a short time,” recalls Chaimaa.

Now the baby, who was in a vegetative state from September to October, is already talking, playing with blocks, putting things in a cup and reaching for his bottle.

The treatment center is located in Marrero, but will move to Metari in the coming weeks. Insurance usually does not pay for brain treatment. The child receives weeks of daily treatment.

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