Jodi Burgess’s son, Benji, had been unwell, but his parents had managed to put him in the car to accompany them on a trip for fast food. In line at a local McDonald’s drive-thru, the Australian mom watched helplessly as her son’s health deteriorated in a matter of seconds.
Burgess told 7News she first heard Benji make strange noises from the back seat and turned around to see him shaking:
“I could see his feet shaking. I was terrified, he was turning blue and I was screaming ‘he’s turning blue, he’s turning blue!'”
Burgess and her husband happened to be at the pickup window when the drive thru attendant, Lily Kay, witnessed the commotion. The 19-year-old college student called out to her manager that a baby was having a seizure. As 7News reported, Kay rushed to the Burgess’s car to help.
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Kay explained:
“It felt like forever, when he did finish seizing, I just checked he was breathing, made sure he wasn’t swallowing his own spit and rolled him on the side and things like that.”
What seemed like instincts were actually highly specialized skills Kay was learning as a student paramedic. Although Kay claimed to be “just very lucky” for having been attending the window the moment the Burgess’s baby started seizing (which doctors later attributed to a virus), Jodi Burgess said it was more than that.
“Divine intervention,” Burgess told 7News.
According to Nationwide Children’s, parents should remain calm if their child is having a seizure. Make sure the child is in a safe position where they cannot get hurt and lay them on their side. Do not place anything in the child’s mouth and count how long the child’s seizure lasts.
Afterward, if the child is not already in position, roll them onto one side to prevent saliva from pooling into the back of the throat. Call 911 if the seizure lasts longer than five minutes, they caution.
As for Kay, her hands-on training seemed to have come to good use during her final university exam of the year, which she passed, according to 7News. The prompt was how to treat someone having a seizure.
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