Survival of 10-year-old Alabama boy called miracle

Kelly Kazek

CNHI News Service

TONEY, Ala. — Jim Wiese doesn’t know why he was so compelled to go to find his son on a warm September day as the 10-year-old and a friend rode the family’s go-cart in a nearby pasture in Toney, Ala.

But he stepped away from the grill where he was preparing dinner, hopped on an all-terrain vehicle and went to tell his son Matthew to come eat.

“That’s the first time I’d ever gone chasing after him to do that,” he said, adding that he had also noticed as the boys passed through the gate between the yard and pasture that Matthew had not been wearing his seatbelt. He intended to tell his son to buckle up and head home for steaks.

As he neared the gate, Jim could see the go-cart overturned and Matthew’s friend jumping anxiously beside it.

Matthew was beneath the cart.

“I thought, gosh, they fell over and Matthew’s broken an arm or something,” Jim recalled.

But when he arrived at his son’s side, he saw red.

“Basically, he was drowning in a pool of blood,” Jim said.

As Jim would soon learn, his son had suffered head trauma more massive than any witnessed by medical attendants and his family had unwillingly embarked on a journey of hope, despair and miraculous survival.

Against odds

Jim didn’t know it at the time, but the inner voice that told him to go get Matthew was the first of many small steps leading to a miracle.

“If I had stayed there grilling steaks, he would have died right there,” he said. “It would have taken five minutes to get back down that field.”

The nearest hospital was 15 minutes away from the Wiese (pronounced Wee-see) property, 40 acres that bear the last Toney address before Ardmore in the northeast corner of Limestone County.

“I figured he was going to die,” Jim said.

Jim knew he shouldn’t move Matthew without knowing the extent of his injuries but he also knew he had no time to spare. He held his unconscious son to his chest and drove the ATV to the house.

Inside, Jim asked Matthew’s older brother Andrew, 12, to keep his brother’s head up so he wouldn’t choke on blood while Jim dialed 911. Matthew’s mother Tina stayed nearby, shaken.

“Andrew was really a hero,” Jim said.

When Matthew stopped breathing repeatedly as the family waited an agonizing 12 minutes for the ambulance, Andrew would encourage his brother to live.

“He would say, ‘I love you so much. Keep breathing,’” Jim said. “There was blood flying everywhere. How this 12-year-old kid stayed so calm I don’t know.”

Andrew, who attends Ardmore High School, says only, “I was nervous.”

Before the ambulance arrived, Tina called the pastor of the family’s church, Wooley Springs Baptist, to ask him to pray. The accident occurred Sept. 19, not long before Wednesday night services, so the pastor cancelled the service and a large portion of the congregation appeared in the Wieses’ yard to pray.

In an effort to save precious minutes, Jim said he requested a medical helicopter during his 911 call but the dispatcher told him patients must be evaluated by paramedics before a helicopter could be called.

“I told them, ‘He’s going to be dead by the time paramedics get here,’” he said.

When paramedics arrived, they immediately contacted MedFlight and attempted to stabilize Matthew for the flight.

“They got him into the ambulance and, as they took him down the driveway to meet the MedFlight helicopter, they kept losing him,” Jim said. “They got halfway into the helicopter and lost him again.”

Tina had already left for Huntsville Hospital so she could arrive soon after the helicopter. Jim and Andrew could only stand in the driveway and watch the active boy who played baseball, basketball and football lying near death on a stretcher.

The MedFlight paramedic approached Jim.

“He said, ‘Before I leave, you need to come say goodbye to your son. I’m going to do everything I can but I don’t think I can get him there alive,” Jim recalled.

At Huntsville Hospital, the family learned the extent of Matthew’s injuries.

“It was a massive brain stem injury, one of the worst they’d ever seen. His skull was fractured in about 40 pieces,” Jim said. “They didn’t understand how he was alive.”

Doctors inserted drainage tubes to reduce swelling in Matthew’s brain and told the Wieses the next five days were critical.

A stranger calls

After five days, swelling went down in Matthew’s brain but soon returned. It was a Thursday, eight days after the accident, when family members were told once again that Matthew would not live much longer, according to Terri Fowler, who attends church with the Wieses.

That Friday night, Tina had gone home for much-needed sleep while Jim took Andrew to the Ardmore High football game to provide a brief period of normalcy.

Matthew’s grandmothers and a great aunt remained in the waiting room, Fowler said.

“A gentleman came in and asked for Matthew Wiese’s family,” she said. “He said, ‘I do not know the Wiese family and they do not know me, but I’ve been sent by God. He’s told me to come pray for Matthew.’”

Fowler said as the story was repeated at church, the women had offered the man a chair.

“He said, ‘I pray best on my knees.’ He said an eloquent prayer and they sang a song, all holding hands,” Fowler said. “Then he said, ‘Thank you for allowing me to pray. Matthew will be all right’ and he turned around and walked out. From that point on, Matthew’s vital signs got stronger and they took him off life support. The doctors told them, ‘I don’t understand why he hasn’t died yet.’”

Until that day, medical personnel had been telling the family almost hourly that Matthew could not survive, Jim said.

“Finally, on day 10, they told us that by a miracle of God, there was no other way to explain it, he was getting better,” he said.

Although doctors could not say what functionality Matthew would have, they initially predicted he would remain in a persistent vegetative state on a ventilator, have no mobility on his right side, have no sense of smell, suffer spasms and convulsions and more.

“It was a very ugly prognosis,” Jim said.

Now, Matthew breathes on his own and moves his limbs, and he can smell.

“I stuck a chicken finger in front of his nose and he started chewing with his mouth and trying to eat the chicken finger,” Jim said. “All these things they said were absolutely impossible, he’s doing.”

Though still comatose, Matthew continued to improve and Wednesday he was transported to Childrens Hospital at Scottish Rite in Atlanta, where he will undergo eight to 10 hours of rehabilitative therapy each day for four to six weeks.

Jim said doctors cannot predict an outcome.

“Nobody knows,” he said. “All they know is every prediction they’ve made has been wrong. He’s just a fighter. That’s typical Matthew. Even when everybody else is ready to give up he says, ‘uh-uh.’”

The other miracle, to Jim, has been the response from people around the world. He put a Web site for Matthew at www.caringbridge.org/visit/matthewwiese (or find a link at the Cedar Hill Elementary Web site) and got more than 4,000 visits within a week.

“It blows us away,” he said. “It gives us strength knowing God had a purpose in this. We’ve gotten messages from Germany, Italy, England, California. It’s so humbling as a parent to realize God has used our child to reach so many people and bring so many people together.”

Jim stumbled for words. “It’s…it’s…amazing. I haven’t quite found the right word for it yet.”