Boy, 9, Describes Near-Death Experience from Sepsis

A 9-year old boy recently recalled his near-death experience with a critical condition known as sepsis and the facility that helped to save his life.

About a month ago, Ryan Barnett, 9, of Greenlawn, complained of a stomach virus. So his mother Kathleen brought him to a local hospital. At first, his mother was told it was a stomach virus and not to worry.

The next night, his pain was so severe that his mother brought him back to the hospital, where it was decided he should stay overnight. The following morning, the results of blood work showed that Ryan had sepsis, a condition caused by the body’s overblown response to an infection or injury that leads to organ failure, shock and death in 35 percent of patients and which kills about 225,000 Americans a year.

At a recent news conference held in the new Pediatric Emergency Department at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, Ryan and his family thanked Dr. Peter Silver, the chief of pediatric critical care at Cohen Children’s, who cared for him upon his arrival.

Dr. Silver said clinicians in the hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit immediately set up four IVs of antibiotics for Ryan, who had slipped into a coma. Three days into his stay at Cohen, Ryan sat up for the first time and he returned to school on April 8.

The new 115,000-square-foot facility, built at a cost of $130 million, is scheduled to open the week of May 6 and features the region’s only stand-alone pediatric emergency department.

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