DAVIESS COUNTY, Ky. (WFIE/Gray News) – A Kentucky mother is alive thanks to the quick thinking of her 14-year-old daughter, who took over when she suffered cardiac arrest and passed out behind the wheel.
As a single mother of four, Katie Harris spends all her time making sure her children have everything they need and want, but one afternoon, as she drove her middle child home from school, it became the 14-year-old’s turn to take care of her mother.
“I was blacking out,” Katie Harris told WFIE. “I remember saying, ‘Darby, something’s not right.’ That’s the last thing pretty much I remember.”
Harris was experiencing a rare arrhythmia that caused her heart to beat much faster than its normal rate.
“In that moment, I felt like I was going to die, which I was,” Harris said. “I had VT, which is cardiac arrest.”
The mother was experiencing a rare arrhythmia that caused her heart to beat much faster than its normal rate. That’s when her 14-year-old daughter, Darby Jackson, took the wheel.
“I was like, ‘If someone comes up behind us, we’re just going to be stuck here,’” Darby said. “I just steered the wheel to get her off the middle of the road.”
The Daviess County High School freshman called 911 and followed instructions until paramedics could arrive.
“The whole time, my voice was shaking, but I was trying to stay calm for her,” she said.
Darby says she knew just how serious the situation was when she could see her mom’s heart beating through her chest.
Harris describes motioning to her daughter that she wasn’t able to speak.
“If she wouldn’t have been in the car, I didn’t have enough physical strength to pick up the phone and call 911, so my heart would’ve stopped – immediately,” she said.
Weeks later, Harris has undergone rounds of testing at the University of Kentucky to figure out what happened. She says she still hasn’t really gotten an answer.
In the meantime, Darby’s siblings have stepped up just like she did that day to take care of their mom.
“They’re my world. So, if anything, they’re what I’ve been fighting for the whole time,” Harris said.
If not for some well-planned discussions about how to handle an emergency situation, Harris might not have that chance.
“I always told them, ‘You never know when stuff like this could happen,’” she said.
The family is continuing to travel back and forth to Lexington for further testing at the University of Kentucky. A GoFundMe has been set up to help with their needs as they get to the bottom of what happened.
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