Going Under

Photo by Gary Fletcher

Colby, Kennisen and Ken Knifong gaze out over the creek that nearly claimed Kennisen's life less than a year ago.

Ken and Colby Knifong have lived every parent's worst nightmare. They know the terrifying chill of plunging through icy water, bruised and bloody, screaming their child's name. They know the horror of seeing their son's lifeless body pulled from beneath a sunken log. They know the wave of nausea that hits when they recognize the fear shimmering in the eyes of every paramedic, police officer, nurse and doctor‹ the fear that there's no way this child could survive.

It was a sunny morning last June, and Colby Knifong was outside the family's Enterprise home with her 17-month-old son, Kennisen.

"I bent down to pull a weed," she recalls. "I turned my back on him for just a second."

But a second was all it took. In that instant, Kennisen scrambled down a 20-foot bank, under a fence, and into the frigid creek. When Colby turned around, she felt her blood turn to ice. The family dog sat motionless beside a small, muddy footprint in the creek bank.

Colby hurtled over the fence and down the steep embankment, charging into icy water that surged around her knees. "These logs kept cutting my legs, but I didn't even notice then," she said.

Screaming Kennisen's name, she fought her way downstream as the current pulled at her clothes and slammed her into logs. Seconds passed, with still no sign of her son.

"I ran back to the house and called 911," she said. "Then I ran back out to keep searching."

Steve Rogers, undersheriff with the Wallowa County Sheriff's office, was at his desk when Colby's frantic call came in. With more than 35 years of search and rescue experience under his belt, Steve knew he had to act fast. As he raced toward the Knifong residence with sirens blaring, he passed the familiar truck of an electrician. It was Kennisen's father, Ken Knifong, on his way to a job.

"You just get a feeling in a small town," Ken recalls. "When I saw them turn like they might be headed to our house, I just knew something had happened to Kennisen."

Steve arrived ahead of Ken and quickly directed his deputy to take Colby inside to search the house in case Kennisen was merely hiding. He had been missing for nearly 20 minutes. Struggling to stay calm, Steve ran toward the creek and looked downstream. Something pulled his gaze to a spot nearly 350 yards from where the dog still sat guarding the point of entry. It was something shiny, something that looked like a fishing lure. Steve ran toward it, fear gripping at him as he realized he was seeing was three small buttons on the front of Kennisen's sweatshirt. It's an image that still burns in the back of his mind.

"He was underwater with his arms floating out like kelp and his eyes fixed and dilated," he said.

Steve grabbed Kennisen and pulled him from the surging creek. He pressed his back to expel any water from the small body. As he prepared to start CPR, Steve looked up to see nearly two-dozen people converging on the scene. From neighbors to paramedics, family to police officers, the Knifongs' house was suddenly a whirl of activity.

Ken stood numbly on the sidelines as people took turns performing CPR on his son. "At that point, I didn't think we were going to make it out of town," he said. "It was the most blue, lifeless body I'd ever seen."

Kennisen wasn't breathing. He had no pulse, and his body was cold and unmoving. As Steve Rogers performed CPR, he tried to squelch the feeling of hopelessness that gripped him. "This kid couldn't have been any deader. He was as blue as his little sweatshirt."

Back at Wallowa Memorial Hospital, Head Nurse Gail Johnson, RN, and Tami Perren, RN, were huddled around the nurse's station listening to the dispatch call for the hospital's ambulance. When Lowell Euhus, MD, walked by, Gail asked if he'd go to the Knifongs' house.

"I don't usually go to the scene like that, but something told me I should see what I could do," he said. "When I got there, they already had him in the back of the ambulance doing CPR."

Wallowa County Hospital Ambulance Director Bruce Womack was working frantically to save Kennisen. In his 20-year career, Bruce has been called to several child drownings. All of them died, and Bruce feared Kennisen would be another. "He looked dead," he said. "To be honest, I didn't hold out much hope."

Dr. Euhus jumped in the ambulance with Bruce and his crew, and they tore off toward the hospital. Bruce worked to intubate Kennisen while Dr. Euhus assisted with CPR. When they pulled up at the hospital, everyone leapt into action. Devee Boyd, MD, Kennisen's family doctor was waiting in the ER and he and Dr. Euhus went to work.

"Every EMT, every CNA, the anesthetist, the surgery team, the pharmacist, the nurses, and even a medical resident from OHSU - everyone was doing everything they knew to do," recalls Gail.

For an hour and thirty minutes, everyone poured every ounce of strength into reviving Kennisen. Nurses struggled to warm his frigid body while doctors tried desperately to resuscitate him. Still, they couldn't even get a pulse. The team pressed on, hoping for a miracle. In the midst of the action, someone called Air Life to see if the team was available.

Flight Nurse Brad Saxton, RN, was at Air Life's Northeast Oregon base in La Grande when the call came in.

"They put us on standby," he recalls. "Hearing the scenario though, I thought we should self-activate and fly over to Enterprise, just in case they needed us."

So when nurses felt the first flutter of a pulse, the Air Life crew was at Kennisen's side in seconds. Gail Johnson remembers a mixture of joy and terror in that moment.

"I was almost frightened when we got a blood pressure and a pulse," she recalls. "I thought, Œwhat are we going to have now, a vegetative state?' He'd been down so long."

Photo by Gary Fletcher

The Knifongs spend a spring afternoon in Kennisen's sandbox.

The Air Life crew quickly whisked Kennisen to the airport, trying to soothe Colby as they worked feverishly to stabilize her son. As the clinical crew worked their magic aboard the Pilatus PC-12, Colby watched helplessly. In the cockpit, pilot Julian Pridmore-Brown got the aircraft in the air.

"I told Air Traffic Control we needed to expedite this one as much as possible," he recalls. "They were really helpful."

Colby glanced nervously out the window as the plane soared over her home, headed for Boise. The Air Life team fought to warm Kennisen and maintain his vital signs.

"In some ways, the hypothermia can save people," explained Doug Ferguson, respiratory therapist on Kennisen's flight. "It shuts down the whole metabolic process and can actually preserve function. That was one thing that gave us hope."

The flight to Boise was lightning fast. In a startling twist of fate, the doctor on call that day happened to be a cold-water drowning expert. As Colby waited helplessly at St. Luke's in Boise, Ken and the rest of their family made the harrowing four-hour drive to Boise.

When the family arrived, things didn't look good. Colby still has a copy of the doctor's notes predicting a grim outcome. "He said we'll give him 24 hours to see if any neurological recovery can happen at all," Colby recalls.

But Kennisen fought hard. After five days on life support, he began to give his family a faint glimmer of hope.

"They had him sedated, but he kept trying to push himself up on the bed and yank the tubes out," Colby recalls. "They'd said he wouldn't do that. I went to him and said, Œmommy's here,' and I put my arms around him and he went to sleep."

It was a dark time, but ten days later, Kennisen was discharged from the hospital. Today, the vivacious two-year-old shows no signs of neurological damage. Undersheriff Steve Rogers has a picture in his office of Kennisen frolicking on the beach just a few months after the accident. Gail Johnson and Bruce Womack have their own photos of Kennisen displayed prominently at their desks - a constant reminder that positive outcomes are possible even in the bleakest traumas.

"I've been a part of a lot of codes, but I've never been a part of anything like this," Bruce said. "You get one of these once in a career."

For the Knifong family, there's no question a miracle took place on that June day. "If I had known this was going to happen, I couldn't possibly have orchestrated it better," Colby said. "The care we received from everyone was beyond excellent. Everyone was in the right place at the right time to save Kennisen."

 

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