It’s a mother’s worst nightmare, her child is expected home and then doesn’t arrive.
Last Thursday night it happened to Red Deer mother Shauna Bossert, who was waiting for her 14-year-old son Braidyn to come home.
He was expected home shortly after 7 p.m.
When he wasn’t home by 8 p.m. Shauna started to worry, left messages on his cellphone and called the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, where he’d been volunteering. It wasn’t like Braidyn not to call home or pick up his phone.
By 9 p.m. she knew something was wrong and she hopped in the car to drive around and look for him.
Braidyn had left the hospital, where he volunteers visiting patients and delivering flowers, at the regular time.
He took the bus home and he got off three blocks from his home in the city’s southside.
Before crossing the street, he had a seizure and collapsed in a snowbank.
Temperatures were at minus 15 C, as he laid there unconscious and unresponsive in the snow for 20 to 40 minutes.
Braidyn has a foggy memory of a woman shaking him awake. She got blankets from her car to put under his head and laid a jacket over him to keep him warm, as she called 911 and fire-medics arrived to help.
“She has either taken first aid or she had amazing instincts because she did everything right,” Shauna said.
When Braidyn arrived at the hospital a security guard recognized him from his time volunteering, looked up his contact information and phoned his mother shortly after 9 p.m.
As it turned out, her son Braidyn had had a seizure out of the blue. He has no history of something similar happening or any underlying illness or condition that would have caused it.
“I know by the time I would have found him, maybe it would have been an hour later,” Shauna said. “She really did save him.”
Shauna wants to thank the woman for saving her son.
She tried to get the woman’s name from the fire-medics, but they didn’t have it. She said she is so thankful the woman stopped.
“Not everybody would stop,” she said. “I think that not only she deserves to be recognized by us, but by everybody.”
Braidyn said he would like to be able to thank his guardian angel.
“Thank you for finding me in the snow. Without her I might not be here talking to you,” he said.
He has recovered from the experience after spending a night in the hospital on Thursday.
“It was every mom’s worst and inconceivable nightmare,” Shauna said. “It turned into a happy ending for us.”
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com