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ORLANDO, Florida — A mother whose then-14-week-old son was seriously injured in a car accident 10 years ago decided to track down and thank the medical professionals who saved his life.
Just 14 weeks after the birth of her first child, Kellie Haddock, her husband and their son Eli were in a car crash that took the life of her husband and left her baby with a traumatic brain injury.
“My world fell apart in an instant, I went from singing to weeping,” Haddock wrote on her blog. “From all being as it should be, to suddenly finding everything in a million pieces around me. I felt like I was left standing there in the middle of the rubble and I didn’t know which way was north.”
If not for the medical professionals who treated him at Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando, Haddock says in the video that her boy would not be alive today.
Since then, Haddock has raised Eli and remarried. And, after 10 years, she decided to thank those who helped make that happen, resulting in a video.
I’m tempted to recap the rich details of each person we thanked, to share what their specific role was in caring for Eli and why their role was so essential. I wish there was time to describe the experience of seeing their faces 10 years later and sharing the rest of the story of how Eli survived and has defied the odds ever since. Not only did he live, but he is walking, talking and showing emotion — the very things we were told he would probably never do.
Haddock said more than half of the individuals she met with said they had never been thanked after treatment.
“I’ve never been thanked (after). It’s not something you do for anything,” said one woman. “Look at him, he’s whole.”
