After being discovered unconscious in a hot tub on Friday night, the mother of a sixth-grader reported that her son is in the intensive care unit but is making progress.
According to Anne Thorpe, her 12-year-old son Jason was having a celebration on Friday, his last day of sixth grade, when the disaster occurred.
“They were in the hot tub playing at their house just next door to my house,” Thorpe stated. “From what we’ve heard, they were all talking about how long each other could hold their breath underwater. And they were saying, like, two minutes and three minutes, and someone said five minutes, and someone said, nobody can hold their breath for five minutes. And, I don’t know how it came about that my son ended up trying to hold his breath for five minutes.”
They think he held his breath and passed out at some time. Jason was dragged out of the water by an adult at this gathering. According to Thorpe, one of the mothers present is an off-duty nurse.
“If she hadn’t been there in that moment, I mean, even a minute longer, we would be dealing with a completely different story,” she stated. “We’re bonded forever and I owe her everything. So she was telling me the importance of knowing how to do CPR first of all, and second of all, of knowing how to do CPR correctly. ”
According to Thorpe, she gave CPR for seven to nine minutes until officers and firefighters showed up.
Jason was brought to Primary Children’s Hospital in Lehi, where he is currently on a ventilator, sedated, and intubated. It won’t be an easy comeback, according to his mother.
“The first 72 hours, anything can happen,” Thorpe stated. “Things can look really good one minute and then the next minute, we’ve got swelling on the brain or other things, like he’s developed pneumonia now. And so luckily they kind of assumed that was going to happen and started him on antibiotics right away.”
According to her, anyone may have experienced this.
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“He plays lacrosse, he is a wrestler and he is a very strong swimmer,” Thorpe stated. “The kids that were with them were not aware of what to look for. Being underwater too long is not cool. It’s not funny. You don’t need to prove anything. You’re not a fish, you know, like, we’re human and we’re only designed to be underwater for so long.”
For Jason’s family, Karen Harvie Jensen, his teacher, set up a GoFundMe page. The road ahead may be lengthy, and his family is dealing with significant medical expenditures.
