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burning car

By Mark Cox
October 28, 2010 at 3:49 pm

You don’t expect to see a three-year-old policeman on the beat. And I daresay you’d look twice if your house caught fire and a toddler fire-fighter turned up. But, it appears, you’re never too young to be an emergency life-saver.

When Petrina Richards had a severe asthma attack recently – then suddenly realised her inhaler wasn’t working – things looked bleak for a moment. But the young mother had her own little 999 hero on standby in the form of Jodi, her three-year-old daughter. Besides being cute as a button, the infant phenomenon also turned out to be a first aid marvel.

As Petrina explains: “Jodi could see I wasn’t breathing properly and somehow recognised that the inhaler wasn’t working. I’d never taught her what to do, she just knew on her own.

“She went downstairs by herself, found another inhaler, brought it back and put it into my mouth for me. Then she went and got the phone, bringing it back with the instruction to ‘Phone Daddy!’.

“Afterwards I was crying so much, not from the attack but because I was so overwhelmed by what she’d done for me. She must have seen what I’d done before and just taught herself. I’m just amazed.”

So there you have it. Three years old. Cool as a cucumber. Exactly the right response – unprompted, mind – to a serious emergency. She’ll probably be performing tracheostomies by the time she’s five.

(On a more personal note, I apparently still couldn’t hold a spoon properly when I was three. These over-achievers make me ill with envy.)

Jodi’s quick thinking was recognised last month at the British Red Cross Humanitarian Citizen Awards, which celebrate the heroic and caring antics of younglings across the UK.

Can you imagine how proud Mum must be? She must be grinning ear to ear at having such a bright little dynamo for a daughter.

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Tags: emergency response, First aid, first aid tips, first aid training

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2010 at 3:49 pm and is filed under First aid, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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