Dallas firefighter, wife's quick action helps save infant son's life

Three months ago, Dallas firefighter Ian Kammerer found himself on the unfamiliar side of a 911 call.

Call it instinct, or perhaps intuition, but something was suddenly, seriously wrong with his healthy 5-week-old son, Kenji.

"We just picked him up," Kammerer said, "and he just screeched and then [we] just saw the blood was drained from his face."

Paramedics rushed the baby to Medical City Children's Hospital in Dallas. Kenji's intestines, for no obvious reason, had suddenly twisted, shutting off the blood supply.

"And literally we were sitting in that room, and those doors kept opening," Lindsey Kammerer, Kenji's mom, said from a hospital waiting area. "And we kept watching for an update."

Doctors said they were worried, too.

"And she came right to my face and said, `Do you think he's going to make it?'" Dr. Kris Bysani of Medical City Children's said. "And he was dying."

Doctors there said that had the parents not acted so quickly, Kenji almost certainly would have died.

"We were so worried about him," Dr. Shweta Murthi said. "And on the way up to the ICU, as we were bringing him up on the stretcher, I remember he opened his eyes, and he looked at us, and we brought Mom to the bedside, and we said, `There's hope. There's still hope."

Now, 77 days and four surgeries later, Kenji is going home.

"You're happy. Excited. Scared?", Lindsey said, before deciding on "all the above."

As dozens of Medical City Children's staffers lined the halls with rattles and signs, Ian's fellow firefighters joined them. The makings of a dream day began to emerge from what could only be described as a nightmare.

"It was overwhelming," Ian said. "I remember, at my station, they were already thinking of things that we would need. Even the first week, we were just focusing on him, and everything was already taken care of."

Now 4 months old, Kenji is a chubby, squirming, sometimes fussy bundle of joy. Before his parents began to embrace the bliss of normal life, Lindsey couldn't hold back the tears as she thought of her much-expanded family at Medical City Children's.

"I don't think there's enough words to tell them. And I don't think that they even truly understand how, as individuals, each impacted us," Lindsey said. "Like you could put each person in front of me, and I could probably tell them a moment where they just saved me, or they saved Ian."

All while saving her precious baby boy.

"It's everyone," Lindsey said, "everyone."

Ian said, "We're just so thankful."