By Catherine Lathem, CTV Ottawa.
Cuddled in his Dad’s arms with tired eyes, eight-week old Nikita Shelkovyy lets out a big yawn, probably wondering what all the fuss is about.
“I vaguely remember, I was passing out, it was all a blur,” Shelkovyy’s mother Oksana tells CTV while holding back tears, “he stopped breathing.”
Last Thursday, started out as a great day for the new parents, Oksana and her husband Yuriy had been out shopping to buy a new stroller for Nikita. They were excited to get home and try it out. When driving down St. Laurent Boulevard, Oksana was in the backseat with Nikita, when she noticed he was going stiff and turning purple and grey, “there was no movement, no reaction, nothing. He looked dead, completely dead to me.”
Yuriy pulled over and called 9-1-1, the new parents were screaming for help.
“People stopped, many people were stopping, cars stopping,” says Yuriy, “many people were calling 9-1-1.”
All of those strangers and bystanders now being credited with saving young Nikita’s life, “there are no words to describe how grateful we are,” says Yuriy, “we are blessed.”
An off-duty support worker with the nearby Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre, Geraldina Cavalgo, was one of the first to stumble on the scene. Trained in first-aid, she jumped into action, performing CPR on Nikita. It was her quick thinking that helped the boy start breathing again.
Bylaw officer, David McEvoy, also passing by the chaotic scene, stopped to help, bringing the boy to his air conditioned vehicle, checking his vital signs.
All of this unfolding while Nikita’s parents were on the line with 9-1-1 paramedic dispatcher Sandra Dinel, who was walking the frantic parents through CPR, before paramedics and firefighters arrived.
“It’s difficult to express the gratitude, thank you is not enough,” says an emotional Oksana while staring at their son.
The new parents had an opportunity to say thank-you, reunited with the life-saving trio in Nikita’s CHEO hospital room on Monday.
“He will be in my heart forever,” an emotional Cavalgo told the Shelkovyy’s.
Yuriy embraced the burly bylaw officer, thanking him for his help, before apologizing to Dinel, the dispatcher, for not being calmer while speaking with her on the phone.
“This is the best outcome, all the stars were aligned for this child,” says Dinel, “it’s a little emotional only because you get to meet the people you helped out. It feels really good.”
“It’s a fantastic feeling to know the family and the baby is ok,” says McEvoy.
“I’m happy, I’m very happy for them, for the baby,” says Cavalgo, “the baby is amazing, and I’m happy for that.”
It was easy to see Cavalgo and the ShelKovyy’s had already formed a strong connection, exchanging phone numbers and vowing to stay in touch. “I don’t have family here,” Cavalgo a Portuguese-Canadian told the couple originally from the Ukraine, “you don’t have family, my family can now be your family.”
Nikita, who turned 8-weeks old on Monday, remains at CHEO. His parents say he is stable and say doctors believe it may have been a form of reflux that caused him to stop breathing.
Oksana and Yuriy say they are blessed to have met the three good Samaritans but say there were others at the scene, a man named Serge, firefighters and paramedics, who helped save Nikita, and they want to thank them all.
“They are like angels, we were so lucky,” says Oksana, “I don’t know them, but thank you so much.”
The couple also has a message to other new parents, encouraging them to get first-aid training, “we both did CPR in May, but you don’t remember, you just don’t know what to do, you’re so scared,” says Oksana, “take it seriously, because you think that you won’t need it, it’s not going to happen to me, well it happens.”
Oksana took a refresher CPR course on Sunday at CHEO. They hope Nikita will never be in distress again, but they say they’ll be prepared.