Heart attack football boy, 13, is improving
A young footballer fighting for his life after suffering a cardiac arrest during a game on Sunday is showing small signs of improvement, according to his father.
Paul Barham said his son Quinton, 13, had begun to flex his fingers and cough after doctors gradually reduced the drugs that have been keeping him sedated after his collapse. Quinton’s life was saved by other parents, coaching staff and paramedics who rushed to his aid when he collapsed while playing for Bradford Town’s under-14s side in an away cup match at Bromham in Wiltshire on Sunday afternoon.
His father spoke yesterday of the moment his son stopped breathing in his arms, and of the heroic – and ultimately successful – efforts to revive him.
Mr Barham said: “He had played the first half and scored a hat-trick, he is a top goal scorer and is absolutely excellent. About five minutes into the second half Quinton put his hand up and came running off the pitch clutching his chest. I was on the other side of the field and I saw them sit him down and wrap coats around him to keep him warm and then just carried on with the match. I could see something wasn’t right with him so I went round to see him. He was sat in the crouched position and I put my arm around him and he told me that his chest really hurt.
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“Within seconds his head fell back, his eyes rolled back, he fell into my arms, and he stopped breathing. I have never seen somebody look like that in my life, he was so white,” he said. “Then all of a sudden somebody, I think another parent, was performing CPR and then somebody else came along and carried on and that was ultimately what saved him. If I hadn’t have gone across to see him nobody would have noticed him, he would have rolled backwards, people would have thought he was taking a nap or something and he would have died. It was so close.
“I’m so glad I went around to see him, it keeps going over and over in my head. It was a long time before they could get a pulse and Quinton was on the ground being worked on for an hour,” he added.
Doctors at Bristol’s Children’s Hospital discovered that Quinton’s pulmonary artery is in the wrong place and now think he will have to undergo an operation to fix it. They reduced slightly the drugs to see his progress yesterday. “They obviously had to put him straight back under again but they just wanted to see how he was doing,” said Mr Barham. “Things are starting to look up now, there are a few signs that are giving us hope.”
Schoolfriends from Clarendon College came to visit him in hospital.
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