There’s always hope, even in the most trying circumstances.

2-year-old Gore Otteson disappeared from the family cabin on the evening of July 6th, while his mother was getting her other children dressed for bed. Immediately, she began to panic and search the grounds of their Gunnison, Colorado cabin. But it was 25 minutes before they found him—lying cold and pale, facedown, in a nearby irrigation ditch.

Gore wasn’t breathing. “He was just pale, like someone — frankly, someone that’s dead. And that’s what he was,” Gore’s grandfather, Dr. Kirk Fry, told The TODAY Show.

“I thought I had lost him,” said his mother, Amy Otteson. “I thought for almost an hour that he was dead.”

Gore’s family members began CPR on his cold body immediately, and called for an ambulance, but his chances seemed dim. His heart had stopped beating.

At the hospital, though, doctors restarted his heart, and then decided to try an experimental treatment in which the body temperature was lowered to 90 degrees, which they hoped would protect him from permanent brain damage.

As the doctors gradually brought Gore back up to normal body temperature, no one was sure what the toddler would be like, and if he would ever be a normal child again. But as soon as the boy opened his eyes, he signed the word “hungry,” using the symbol his parents had taught him.

An MRI exam was even more reassuring: there were absolutely no abnormalities. Several days later, Gore walked out of the hospital, as good as new.

The Ottesons have the experimental treatment to thank for their son’s good fortune. Therapeutic cooling has been shown to increase the odds of adult heart attack patients, but its effects on children were unknown. Fortunately for the Ottesons, science saved the day.

Check out this TODAY Show video about the family’s amazing story.

Source: Gimundo

At 79, Jean Lichorat of Kissimmee has outlived her family and friends. But she’s doesn’t feel alone.

“My dog is the best companion,” she says of her cocker spaniel, Joanne. “That’s my baby. I love her so much.”

Because Lichorat doesn’t have anyone to care for her dog and can’t afford a kennel, she puts off any medical test or procedure that requires an overnight stay at the hospital. She would rather risk her health than endanger, or possibly lose, her only companion.

That’s why Jimmy’s Place, the council’s soon-to-open pet hotel, means so much to Lichorat and others like her. Depending on the size of the guests staying there, the facility has room for up to 10 pets for short periods while the elderly owners are at the hospital or getting care.

“This kind of situation is very common among our elderly clients with pets,” said Robert Dent, a spokesman for the Osceola County Council on Aging. “Some will even refuse to go to the hospital after a 911 call.”

Advocates for seniors and animals said they haven’t heard of a program like Jimmy’s Place anywhere else in the state but applauded the idea.

“Kudos to them,” said Jake White, executive vice president of the SPCA of Central Florida. “It is great that an agency that supports seniors steps forward to help animals. They [animals] really make a difference in their lives and help them in many ways.”

Many studies have shown that seniors with pets have better physical health and mental well-being than those who don’t.

“A program that provides good care for a beloved animal is also providing an important support for the human who cares for that animal,” AARP Florida State Director Lori Parham said.

Jimmy’s Place has been in the works for more than a decade. It’s the brainchild of the council’s Meals on Wheels volunteers Jimmy Scarborough and his wife, Pat.

Jimmy Scarborough, a retired deputy sheriff who died in 1998, noticed that some of the program’s elderly clients couldn’t afford pet food and would split their Wheels meals with their cats or dogs. Scarborough began to buy food for the animals out of his own pocket and had the drivers — he was the program’s Kissimmee coordinator — deliver it along with the clients’ meals.

Soon the Council on Aging was on board.

“We began to collect pet food in our food drives and have been delivering it to clients with pets for years now,” Dent said.

After Jimmy Scarborough died at 89, his wife made it a point to keep the program alive and expand it to offer other services.

“We began raising money for it at Jimmy’s funeral,” Pat Scarborough, 75, said. “I told people not to spend money on flowers and give me or the council the money instead. I knew that would make Jimmy very happy.

“I spent $150 on rented plants and raised much more than that for a good cause,” she said.

Over time, the council had been looking for ways to make the pet hotel happen. It came together this year after the organization secured a couple of grants to refurbish a small space in a building it already owned.

Jimmy’s Place will officially open Friday, but it is already in operation.

Lichorat hasn’t had to use it yet, but she’s ecstatic to know it will be available for Joanne if an emergency arises.

“That’s good,” she said laughing. “Oh, wow. That’s good.”

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Cloveice DeMaintenon, 85, lives with Teleka, her Chinese crested, in an assisted-living apartment at Oak Leaf Landing in Kissimmee. If she should need to leave home to receive medical care, she won’t have to worry about Teleka, thanks to Jimmy’s Place, the free pet hotel sponsored by the Osceola Council on Aging