A Long Island 4-year-old and his mother shared an emotional reunion with the doctors and nurses who saved the boy\u2019s life after he suddenly went into cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n
Today, Jack Carlin is a typical boy who loves monster trucks. But in July 2024, his life nearly ended when he stopped breathing on the way to Huntington Hospital in Suffolk County. By the time he arrived at the hospital, he was pale, bluish around the mouth and not breathing on his own. Medical staff couldn’t find a pulse.<\/p>\n
Jack\u2019s mother, Maria Carlin, who is a nurse, said her son had been fighting what seemed like a familiar ailment \u2014 a croup cough. She loaded him into her car for the 10-minute drive from their Lloyd Harbor home to the hospital. <\/p>\n
But halfway there, Jack suddenly stopped breathing.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of my choices at the time were ideal. They were terrible, but I had to decide,\u201d Maria said.<\/p>\n
Faced with an difficult decision \u2014 stop on a dark road to help her son or race to the hospital \u2014 she chose to keep driving.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was horrible making this decision,\u201d she said, fighting back tears as she recalled that night.<\/p>\n
At the hospital, ER doctor Jennifer Gibb led the team that met the concerned mother in the emergency bay and revived Jack within minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is exactly why I do what I do,\u201d Gibb said.<\/p>\n
Even for a seasoned medical staff, the moment was deeply emotional.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mom started cheering him on, saying \u2018C\u2019mon Jack,\u2019 and then it hit me \u2014 that human emotion,\u201d Gibb said. \u201cI got choked up because my own son\u2019s name is Jack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack was later transferred to Cohen Children\u2019s Hospital, where doctors discovered the cause of his cardiac arrest: a rare condition involving a separation between his trachea and esophagus. Surgery has since corrected the issue, and Jack has fully recovered.<\/p>\n
His father recalled the moment his son regained consciousness.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just looked up at me and was just like, \u2018Dad, can I have a hug?\u2019 It was like he never missed a beat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Jack returned to Huntington Hospital on Wednesday, nearly a year and a half after the medical scare, to personally thank the team that saved him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you so much,\u201d little Jack said, drawing applause from the room.<\/p>\n
Carlin said her son\u2019s recovery has led to questions she\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe turned to me and he said, \u2018Mommy, why didn\u2019t you want me to go to heaven?\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For the Carlin family, the words are a reminder of how close they came to tragedy, and how grateful they are for the team that gave Jack another chance at life.<\/p>\n
“I brought in a dead child, and they brought him back to life,” said Carlin.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC New York. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC New York journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Long Island 4-year-old and his mother shared an emotional reunion with the doctors and nurses who saved…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":391139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,11361,6084,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-391138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-good-news","10":"tag-long-island","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115579422181069040","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}