Miracle recovery of toddler whose cold triggered a heart attack

It may have been only the snap decision of ambulance worker Lisa Derbyshire to wait in her car for her next call, rather than park up and go inside, that made the difference. As she hugged Poppy’s parents yesterday, she reflected: “Some things are just meant to be.”

Just two months had passed since she was called to what in ambulance parlance is a “patient not breathing”.

Poppy, a healthy toddler of 14 months, had fallen silent in her mother’s arms after contracting the highly contagious parvovirus at the tail end of her cold.

Even after Ms Derbyshire managed to revive the little girl, Poppy suffered a further cardiac arrest and two strokes. Doctors gave her only a slim chance of survival, and she remained on life-support for nearly a week before starting to improve.

Yesterday, the clinician was back at Poppy’s house in York, at the invitation of her parents, to see the remarkable recovery she had set in train.

She recalled: “When I first got the call to help Poppy she was showing no signs of life, so to go back into the same room a few weeks later and see her crawling and playing like any other toddler was amazing. It made me feel really teary.

​“I was two minutes away when I got the call. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and was able to give Poppy the help she needed when she needed it.

It took six cycles of life support and resuscitation before the child started to respond. She was taken by ambulance to York Hospital and later transferred to Leeds Infirmary, where it was discovered that her virus had triggered inflammation of the heart muscle.

She was put on a ventilator and an oxygenation machine which took over the work of her heart while it rested and recovered.

As she and Ms Derbyshire hugged yesterday, the little girl’s mother, Elaine Smith, said: “She was minutes from death, the situation was that grave, and if it hadn’t been for Lisa’s efforts that night she wouldn’t have made it to hospital.”

Her father, John Palmer, a landscape gardener, added: “There was a risk that she could have suffered severe brain damage, so it was a worrying time when they took her off the sedation to see how she reacted.

“One of the best moments was when Elaine was holding her and Poppy opened her eyes. There was instant recognition when she saw her mummy, and we knew there was a spark and that her brain was working okay.

​“There was paralysis on her left side but over a few days she got movement back. She instantly recognised her favourite television programme, the Teletubbies, and she said all the words she had said before – it has been a remarkable comeback. She is our little miracle.”