So, here we are again. Thanksgiving Day.
Tyanna Doyon and her son Felix. Kim Dupuis photo
On Thursday, you’ll all sit around dinner tables heaped high with food you just can’t wait to tear into. Perhaps you’ll join hands with family members on either side of you, paying at least brief homage to the ritual of thankfulness the holiday is meant to embrace.
Murmurs of thanks for this and that. Sometimes you really have to think about what you’re grateful for on this particular year because your stomach is groaning so hungrily. So you mutter something about family, friends and good health and then, amen. It’s go time and, fork in hand, you go after that turkey like it did you wrong.
It’s a scene that will play out at dinner tables all across America.
But not for Tyanna Doyon of Waterford. This year, when her family gathers around their table, Tyanna means to spend extra time pondering the many things for which she is so supremely thankful.
“I don’t even know how to explain how grateful I am,” Tyanna said. “I don’t know how to put it into words.”
When she gathers for Thanksgiving dinner, Tyanna will be joined by her 3-year-old son Felix. Two weeks ago, it seemed there was a strong chance that Felix would never see another Thanksgiving at all, let alone this one.
On Nov. 11, this 3-year-old was involved in a nasty wreck in Auburn, and there was a lot of concern at the time that the boy wouldn’t make it.
Tyanna had just gotten home from work when she got a call from a police officer informing her that her son had been hurt in a crash.
And not hurt just a little. Hurt quite a lot.
“I can’t even describe the feeling,” Tyanna said. “I felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest.”
The young mother, who works in South Paris, drove to Norway to meet her dad, who took her to the Lewiston hospital. But before they were halfway there, Tyanna was told her son had been moved, by helicopter, to a bigger hospital in Portland.
Helicopters are generally used for patients who are in dire condition, and Tyanna knew this. Half mad with worry already, she now had to confront the unimaginable idea that the worst may happen.
“That was the longest drive of my life,” she said. “I just kept saying, oh please, when I get there, don’t let him be dead.”
When she got to Maine Medical Center in Portland, Felix was not dead but he did appear to be in bad shape.
“It was the worst sight ever,” Tyanna said, recalling that moment when she rushed to his bedside. “He had tubes coming out of his nose, IVs coming out of both hands and a collar around his neck.”
It’s what the writers call “a mother’s worst nightmare,” and in that terrible moment, Tyanna, mother of two sons, knew that it would require a miracle for her boy to survive such a horrific ordeal.
And then she got a sign that perhaps a miracle would come.
“I got a little smile from him,” she said. “Like, a smile of relief because Mommy finally showed up.”
It’s not hyperbolic here to speak of miracles. Several doctors told Tyanna over ensuing days that they were shocked that Felix had come through. His liver had been almost ripped in half, after all, when the truck he had been riding in slammed into a tree at an estimated 50 mph.
So, yeah. Talk of miracles if you want to about this wreck, and talk of divine intervention, too, if you’re so inclined. Tyanna, for one, won’t think you crazy.
“A very serious guardian angel was watching over him that night,” she says. “He had someone very powerful with him that day, no doubt.”
Felix was in the hospital five days, but he’s back home now and his prognosis is quite good. The boy’s father is still hospitalized with injuries suffered in the crash, so Tyanna will have her son seven days a week going forward. To make that work, she’ll have to perform that crazy mom dance, juggling things like day care, a job and the follow-up medical appointments Felix requires.
Meanwhile, both mother and son are still experiencing nightmares about the ordeal. Things will be rough for a while. It will be a struggle for all involved.
And man, is Tyanna grateful. When she pulls up before the dinner table Thursday, there’ll be so many things she’s thankful for, the potatoes could go cold while she recounts them.
There are the firefighters, the police, the doctors . . . there’s whatever great power of the universe brought them all together to save Felix’s life, and there’s Kim Dupuis, the lady who rushed over to the crash scene to comfort the boy while he was still trapped in the wreckage.
“She held my son’s hand when I could not,” Tyanna said of that particular angel. “She didn’t think twice about it, she just ran right to him. Kim is a pretty special person.”
Thursday, Nov. 11, was the worst day of Tyanna’s life. All things considered, Thursday, Nov. 25, may turn into her best, and isn’t it just awesome when that happens?
A fundraiser has been launched to help Tyanna with medical costs. To donate go to: www.facebook.com/donate/380073280565509/
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