Pool
A small child’s birthday party normally isn’t news, but this was no ordinary birthday celebration for 3-year-old Kinlee Keltner, whose family celebrated her life and rejoiced in the divine favor and prayers that cover her.
Kinlee Keltner the Survivor
Last July, when Kinlee was 2, she nearly drowned in her family’s pool in Morehead. Her father, a trained CPR provider, used his skills for the first time to breathe his daughter back to life.
“It was just after supper on a Friday night,” said her dad, Brian Keltner.
“My dad, my girls — Taylee, Kessaney, Kinlee — and I decided to go for an evening swim. Minutes after entering the pool, Kinlee, right on cue, decided she needed to go potty,” he said.
Brian recalled how he took Kinlee to her mom, Sherridan, who took her to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Sherridan changed into her swimsuit. As the mother came out to the pool she asked, “Where’s Kinlee?”
“We thought she was with you,” they replied.
Sherridan immediately ran to the front door, thinking Kinlee had opened it and gone out into the road. But Kinlee had managed to open the heavy sliding glass door to the pool and entered the water on her own.
As her father began to climb out of the pool, he heard Kinlee’s grandfather yell, “No!”
Her grandfather pulled her from the bottom of the pool and placed her in her father’s arms.
“I began giving her CPR. At this point, Kinlee was blue, unresponsive and not breathing. As I began with chest compressions, white foam poured out of her mouth and eyes.
The fluid then turned amber-colored because blood was present.
All the while, Kinlee’s mother began to pray. When she saw her husband with the child, she dropped to the ground and crawled over to them, praying and holding Kinlee’s hand while Brian continued CPR.
An off-duty paramedic arrived within minutes and, finding a weak pulse in Kinlee, transported her to a waiting ambulance.
“We started praying together from the time we got in the police car to the time we arrived at the hospital,” Brian said. “We prayed without ceasing, and Sherridan asked everyone she saw, the doctors, the nurses, police officers, EMTs, even the helicopter pilot if they knew Jesus, and if they did she asked them to pray.”
Kinlee was given a breathing tube and induced into a coma to help her body rest while she was flown to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.
Her parents could not join her in the helicopter, so they drove, praying all the way.
When they arrived at the hospital, barefoot and still in bathing suits, hospital staff escorted them to a waiting room and told them doctors would be with them soon.
“The doctors told us that Kinlee was a very sick little girl, her lungs were full of water and it appeared that she had been under water long enough to cause brain damage,” Brian Keltner said.
Doctors tried to prepare them for the possibility that Kinlee probably would not make it through the night, and if she did she might never be the same.
By that time, however, the Keltner family was part of a vast and growing prayer chain for Kinlee’s life.
“When she was pulled from that swimming pool Friday evening, lifeless, we began praying. We prayed without ceasing as a family.
“And as a family, I don’t mean only the Keltners, I mean our church family and hundreds and thousands of our brothers and sisters in Christ across the world,” Brian said.
After the report from the doctors, Brian and Sherridan began a different sort of prayer.
“We reached a point early Saturday morning where we prayed to God, ‘We know she is your child and you are just letting us borrow her, if you have to take her and that is your will, we will still love and obey you, but we believe this is not your will or your plan. We pray that you would heal her and let us keep our baby.’”
Over the course of the next few days, Kinlee’s condition steadily improved, and the following Tuesday she came home from the hospital.
“There was no medications, no pneumonia, no brain damage, nothing,” Keltner said.
Keltner spoke of uncertainty, of not always knowing what God’s plan was. He could not have known that his decision to learn CPR would one day save his own daughter’s life.
Less than a year after the accident, the Keltners gathered to celebrate Kinlee’s third birthday on Feb. 17.
Kinlee smiled, squirmed on her mother’s lap and seemed not to recognize the significance of this birthday. Her sisters and friends smiled for the camera, and dad shuttled to and from the buffet.
They are expecting a fourth child soon, another girl.
“We never take birthdays for granted anymore,” Sherridan said.
Kinlee’s father said the simplest gift, the ability to breathe, is the most profound.
“There are times I lay in bed and watch Kinlee as she sleeps. Listening to her breath, I just cry and smile knowing God has truly blessed us,” he said.
James Flippin is one of the most active 72-year-olds you’d ever meet. The walls of his home are similar to the hall of fame, covered with awards from the 71 marathons he’s run.
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He has remained fit all of his life, so it came as a surprise last week when he had a heart attack during his daily swim at the Northwest Family YMCA.
“When I would swim, I would be a little short of breath for about 10 minutes, but then it would correct itself,” Flippin said. “But on Nov. 15, after 10 minutes, that’s when I had my heart attack instead.”
James Flippin the Survivor
Linda Crabtree was the only lifeguard on duty at the time, and immediately called for help on her radio. With her quick reaction and the help of Melissa Betts and Elizabeth Janda, the three were able to pull Flippin out of the water.
“He’s 6 feet 4; I couldn’t keep him all the way out,” Crabtree said. “I kept his head out until the other two ladies came to help. Two of us pulled and one of us pushed.”
Once they got him on the pool deck, the three used the automated defibrillator to shock him back to life before the paramedics arrived.
Flippin’s daughter Lucy Johnston spoke of how stunned the doctors were that the women were able to save him: “They were in shock. They were walking around showing each other the papers from the defibrillator, and saying ‘I can’t believe this, he’s so lucky, you’ve got to thank whoever helped him’.”
“It’s great that it had that kind of an outcome, but I just feel like there were guardian angels all over,” Crabtree said.
To Flippin’s family, the real guardian angels are the women who saved his life.
“They’re angels. They were there at the perfect time to help our family,” Flippin’s wife Paula said. “There could not have been more perfect timing.”
Now, Flippin can run a few more marathons, adding to his massive wall collection. But most importantly, he can spend another Thanksgiving with his family.
“You can’t be more thankful than that, when you think there would’ve been an empty seat at the table. And now there’s not going to be one, thanks to those three women,” Paula added.
“It’s a true miracle, that’s the word for my dad. He’s a walking miracle,” Johnston said.
“I’m just grateful to be alive,” Flippin said.
A young boy is pulled from a pool unconscious, but survives, thanks to training his father learned years ago.
Brady Davis the Saviour with Son
Brady Davis jumped into action, after his two-year-old son, Branson, fell into the family’s pool in Heltonville, in Lawrence County.
Looking at this active, energetic two-year-old, you’d never know Branson Davis was near death just days ago.
“He is a miracle. He is a miracle,” said his mother, Jenny Davis.
But in the Davis’ backyard, there’s a now-dismantled, yet clear reminder of a tragedy narrowly averted.
“It’s something you can’t imagine. It’s hard. I see it every time I close my eyes,” Jenny said.
She sees the sight of her son lifeless at the bottom of the family pool.
Last Sunday, Branson climbed over the pool’s filter, presumably going after a toy.
“I went to holler for him and he always answers and he just didn’t answer and something told me just look and then I found him at the bottom,” Jenny said.
Jenny screamed for her husband Brady, and dove in.
“When I heard her screaming like I never heard her scream before, I knew it was something,” Brady Davis said.
Brady says he didn’t hesitate. He came out of the house, grabbed Branson, put him on the deck and immediately started CPR.
“He didn’t have a pulse, wasn’t breathing. He was blue. I finally got him back breathing. Then the first responders got here. They told me, ‘just keep doing what you’re doing, Dad. Keep doing what you’re doing’. It was just reaction…nothing I want to go through again.”
Brady learned CPR while serving in the Air Force.
He kept his training up-to-date through his job at a local quarry.
While he thought he might have to use CPR on a co-worker, Brady never imagined it would save his son.
He now says every parent should get trained in CPR.
“It’s real important,” Brady said.
“Because he [Branson] wouldn’t be there today if he didn’t,” Jenny added.
After two days at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Branson is back home, back to normal and doctors told his parents he has no permanent brain damage.
It’s all thanks to lifesaving skills, given from father to son.
“I’m glad I was there. Or I wouldn’t have my boy right now”
A 74-year-old man was taken to hospital in critical condition after lifeguards rescued him from a pool and found he had suffered cardiac arrest.
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Paramedic spokesman Supt. Darrell Drew said lifeguards at the Ottawa Athletic Centre on Lancaster Road initiated CPR and shocked the man with a defibrillator. Ottawa Fire Service assisted with CPR until paramedics arrived and put the man on advanced cardiac life support.
The man’s pulse had returned by the time he was transported to hospital, Drew said.
