Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Janet Doubledee and son Patrick Foley sit on the pile of sand where he was literally buried and nearly died.

Mom becomes CPR crusader

By Shari Kaplan

Following her son's brush with death, in which a neighbor's knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation saved the boy's life, Los Gatan Janet Doubledee is spreading the word to many others who, like herself, may not know the lifesaving technique.

On the afternoon of March 23, Doubledee's 13-year-old son Patrick Foley, who attends Fisher Middle School, was digging a tunnel in some wet sand piled near the front yard of their home. The sand would later be buried during the installation of a new sewer system in the neighborhood off Black Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Before that happened, however, the sand buried Patrick.

No one heard the large sandpile collapse, but when Dave Doubledee walked out the front door a short time later, he noticed Patrick's foot sticking out from the pile. He and several neighbors dug the boy out, but Patrick was not breathing; his lips were purple and his fingers were "as blue as denim," according to his mother.

After Dave cleared Patrick's airway, neighbor Patti Andresen, a pediatric medical assistant, administered CPR with the encouragement of neighbor Tom Newhall, who also knew CPR. Fire crews, an ambulance and sheriff's deputies arrived a few minutes later.

Doubledee said she was told her son would probably have been severely brain-damaged or dead if he hadn't received prompt CPR.

"The most terrifying thing was that I had to stand back and let others work on him, because I didn't know CPR. I felt I was inadequate in not being able to help my own child. It was the most painful weekend in my life," Doubledee said.

With Patrick breathing raggedly on his own, he was transported to the emergency room at the Community Hospital of Los Gatos, where Doubledee said his lung X-ray showed he had inhaled so much sand that "it looked like someone had sprinkled his lungs with pepper." He was transferred that evening to the pediatric intensive care unit at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Santa Clara, and went home two days later.

Doubledee said Patrick doesn't remember anything about the accident, only going out earlier to play with his 3-year-old brother Jesse, and waking up to find paramedics trying to get him to breathe. Following a regimen of antibiotics to guard against lung infection and about a week of coughing up the remaining sand, Patrick is doing well.

"He's bouncing around and playing video games like a typical 13-year-old. It's hard to believe this happened a week ago," Doubledee said last week. She is in the process of helping organize CPR instruction classes at Lakeside School, which Patrick attended last year, as well as at the nearby Mountain Bible Church.

Doubledee is now encouraging all her friends and neighbors to take CPR classes held at local schools, community organizations or the American Red Cross. And, of course, she is learning the technique herself.

"You don't always have time to run to your house and get the yellow pages to read how to do emergency breathing. You should have some working knowledge of it before you're forced to do it," Doubledee said.

"The fact that someone else knew what to do and I didn't is the whole point of this. I want people to be knowledgeable."