Six-year-old Jaxon McDonald, of Racine, Wisconsin, is getting the hero treatment after he sprang into action and saved his mother's life just in the knick of time. According to Today Parents, the 6-year-old was sleeping next to his mom, April, when he suddenly woke up and noticed she was breathing "like a zombie." Knowing that something must be wrong, Jaxon alerted his older sisters who then called for help — and thank goodness they did.
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The terrifying night unfolded in late March
Little Jaxon, who is sometimes afraid to sleep alone, was lying in his mom's bed when he suddenly woke up around 3 a.m. According to April, her son is a "wildly" active sleeper who often wakes during the night before falling back to sleep. But this time, something was keeping him from dozing off again.
"My son said I was breathing really weirdly, as if I was going to throw up,'" April recalled. "Jaxon ran to get a bowl from the kitchen and woke up his sisters, saying, 'Something is wrong with Mommy.'"
In Jaxon's words, his mom was "breathing like a zombie"
So, when he awoke his three sisters — Kendra, 14, Morgan, 16, and Lexi, 17 — he made sure to let them know it was urgent.
Within seconds, all four children were at their mother's bedside.
"I am a very light sleeper, so they knew something was wrong when Kendra touched my hand and I didn't move," April, 35, recalled.
Little did they know that April had experienced four seizures during the night — the last of which woke Jaxon up.
The three older sisters quickly took control of the situation
While Morgan dialed 911, Kendra ran to her grandmother's house, which is just about two minutes away by foot. Though her grandmother was sound asleep at the time, Kendra's incessant banging and ringing of the doorbell eventually woke Charlene Thomas up to alert her that something was wrong.
"I told [my grandmother] it's an emergency, something is wrong with my mom," said Kendra, according to NBC Bay Area.
Together, the two raced back to the McDonalds' home, where first responders had already arrived.
"I come over here and I look in the bedroom — and [April] was having [another] seizure," Thomas recalled.
April was quickly rushed to a nearby hospital
However, once her condition was deemed critical, she was transferred to Ascension Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital in Milwaukee.
There, doctors soon discovered what had caused the frightening medical emergency in the first place: April had a "tomato-sized" tumor on the frontal lobe of her brain.
On March 31, she underwent emergency surgery, where doctors removed as much of the tumor as they possibly could and sent it on to the Mayo Clinic to determine whether it was cancerous.
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All of this news came as a shock to the mom of four
Especially because the only warning signs she had experienced was a bad migraine in January, which went away once she received prescription medicine. And although she did go on to have some more mild headaches in the weeks that followed, they always went away after she popped a few over-the-counter pain relief meds.
Still, she was scheduled to see a neurologist just one week before her seizures began, just to rule out anything more serious.
Looking back now, she knows she owes her life to her children — and especially little Jaxon.
"The doctor said that if Jaxon hadn't woken up, we'd have a very different situation," the mother told Today. "The hardest part of this was my children finding me."
As terrifying as all of this was, April can't help but feel pride
She praised her 6-year-old for being "caring and observant," as well as having the good sense to alert his "go-to sister" Morgan who would know what to do.
Now that April is back at home, she's been showering her little boy with hugs, snacks, and toys.
"He loves ice cream," the mother told Today. "I also bought him a ninja spy kit, and my mom got him a wallet with the slogan, 'Don't touch my wallet,' which he asked for. He was very excited."
Friends of the family are also pulling together efforts to help support the McDonalds in the coming months ahead, by launching a GoFundMe campaign that has already raised more than $4,000.
