The family of a nine-year-old boy who nearly died following a fall outside his home are raising money to thank those who saved his life. Ioan Watts from Bedwas was taken to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff on October 3 after he fell off his scooter and was left critically ill.
His mum Lydia Watts said Ioan fell down an eight-feet drop and landed directly onto his head on the concrete floor. The accident left him in a coma for nearly a month, and six months later he is still recovering from his injuries. The 43-year-old said her son wouldn't have survived the incident if it wasn't for the life-saving work of the Welsh Air Ambulance charity and Noah's Ark Children's Hospital.
Describing the nightmare incident, Lydia said: "We were getting ready for school and he was ready early because it was his brother Rhodri's eighth birthday. He went outside on his scooter and he fell. It wouldn't have been a major disaster but then he slid and fell off a ledge at a height.
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"His brother heard him yelling, so we went to see and as soon as we saw him I could tell something really bad had happened. He sat up and was briefly conscious, but when I got to him he had a fit, fell back and went unconscious."
At this point, Lydia said she went into "survival mode" and shouted for her husband Rich to call the emergency services. She said paramedics arrived at the scene quickly, before the air ambulance crew took over.
Lydia said: "After my husband called the ambulance, I stayed with Ioan and put him in the recovery position. Then the ambulance call handler told me to put him on his back because they thought I might have to do CPR on him. Luckily he didn't stop breathing. The ambulance came here really quickly and then the air ambulance landed next to the house and saved his life."
When paramedics checked her son's Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) to monitor how unwell he was, Lydia said they recorded a score of three. This is the lowest possible score and is associated with an extremely high mortality rate.
"Air ambulance staff worked on him at home for about an hour or more," Lydia said. "They put a breathing tube on him and gave him medication to minimise the swelling in his brain. They stabilised him the best they could and then took him to the hospital. He went straight to resuscitation in the main hospital. There were about 20 medical professionals working on him while we stood in the corner in a daze. They put him through a scanner and said there was a bit of swelling in his brain and his skull was fractured in multiple places."
Once Ioan was stabilised, Lydia said he was transferred to the Noah's Ark paediatric intensive care unit where he stayed for three-and-a-half weeks and was "probably the illest child there for quite some time". Doctors monitored Ioan's brain swelling daily, but rather than improving the pressure continued to increase. It meant Ioan needed emergency surgery to save his life.
Lydia said: "On day five following his accident Ioan needed emergency surgery to save his life. They needed to remove part of his skull to relieve the pressure on his brain. They said if they didn't operate straight away, he would be gone. They put him in an MRI scanner to see what was happening before the operation and said they weren't sure he would come out the other end because they couldn't monitor him as closely and it took about an hour."
After the operation, doctors and nurses continued to do everything possible to reduce the swelling on his brain, including keeping him at a cool temperature and laying him at an angle. However, it still wasn't clear if Ioan would survive and he remained in a coma for around two more weeks.
"He was doing very little and they weren't particularly hopeful," Lydia said. "He was 'do not resuscitate' for a while. They said if his heart stopped beating it wouldn't be in his best interest to resuscitate him. Then little tiny things started happening. His pupils started reacting and his eyes opened a little bit. He started breathing for himself and began to urinate by himself.
"After three-and-a-half weeks in intensive care they agreed to take his breathing tube out. They didn't know if he was going to be able to breathe for himself but he did. That was a huge relief for us. They had been talking about doing that for 10 days but he hadn't been strong enough previously."
As soon as Ioan was breathing independently he was transferred to a ward with Noah's Ark's neuro rehabilitation programme, where he spent the next 10 weeks until he could finally leave in January. Each day there he would have physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech and language therapy. The hospital teacher would also visit him.
Lydia said: "We were basically living there from October until after Christmas. He couldn't speak or sit up when he first woke up so we didn't know if he was going to be bed ridden for the rest of his life, wheelchair ridden or incontinent or if he would ever speak again, but in November, his recovery was so astonishingly quick.
"At the start of November he couldn't speak or move, but by the end of November he could walk, talk and play on his Xbox - not quite as he could before as he was still relearning a lot. Now we are four or five months later and he can do almost everything he could do before."
Although Lydia said the family feel incredibly lucky to have Ioan almost back to his former self, she said they still have a long way to go. The family has been told it could take two to three years before the full extent of Ioan's brain injury is known.
She said: "You'd think they would come around quickly like on the television and be groggy for a day or two and then fine, but it is a really, really long process. All those fractured pathways in the brain need to refuse back together and form new pathways. He is still changing every week.
"He is in school full-time now after gradually transitioning back and he needs extra support. He struggles with his attention span and impulsivity such as shouting inappropriate things out, which he didn't do before. He was always a very normal, shy, quiet and clever boy, and he is now very different."
Looking back on the last six months, Lydia said the family feel a combination of "lucky and traumatised", adding: "It's going to take us all a bit of time to process it all". She said Ioan is aware of what happened to him and they help him by encouraging him to speak about it. She said: "He is aware of what happened and talks about it a lot. He doesn't want to be treated any differently than anyone else, he just wants to be normal. He gets upset sometimes thinking about what happened but we encourage him to talk about it but not to dwell on it too much.
"It's been harder for Rhodri than anybody because they are so close in age and are best mates. It was really hard for him with his brother and parents being gone, but luckily his older brothers Reuben, 22, and Tavis, 20, were there to look after him."
Something Ioan is very set on is saying thank you to everyone who helped save his life. To give something back, Lydia said he will be running the Caerphilly 2k with Rhodri and around 30 friends from his school. Ioan has already exceeded his target of £1,000, but wants to raise as much as he possibly can. You can support his fundraiser here. All money raised will be split between Noah's Ark Children's Hospital and Wales Air Ambulance.
Explaining why she set the fundraiser up, Lydia said: "The air ambulance came so quickly when he had his accident and I don't think he would be alive if it wasn't for them. The work they did on him before he even got to hospital probably made all the difference to him. Staff on the paediatric intensive care unit were also amazing. They are there nursing your child for 24 hours. Even when we were not sure if Ioan was going to survive, they were always so positive, trying to get the family involved with reading to him and things like that.
"They would always answer our questions and tell us what was happening. They always had time for us even though they were very busy. Once we were on the ward at Noah's Ark, they had a team there who brought toys to your children and things they were interested in and chatted to them. We want to raise money for these charities because Ioan wouldn't be here without them. He's lucky that he's recovered as well as he has and he now wants to try and do something positive."
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