BABY’S CRY SAVES FAMILY
Parents credit 15-month-old girl for helping them escape carbon monoxide poisoning
Most new parents can’t wait until their baby finally sleeps through the night without stirring. Not Monique and Kyle Ruppel.
“I don’t care if she never sleeps through the night ever again, because her waking up is the only thing that saved us,” said her mom.
Because 15-month-old Celia woke in the middle of the night, the Ruppels — along with their four cats and two dogs — escaped carbon monoxide poisoning in their Kamloops home.
Now they’re urging anyone and everyone to ensure their gas detectors are installed and working properly.
“Our house is 26 years old and we didn’t have any carbon monoxide detectors,” said Kyle Ruppel, a construction estimator. “I think it was one of those things that never crossed our minds.”
In the early hours of Friday, Monique Ruppel awoke to the sound of her baby girl crying for the second time that night. Before making it to the bedroom door, she was hit by vertigo and collapsed onto the bed, waking her husband.
“We quickly realized we both felt the same way — we both had vertigo, we both had pounding headaches, our eyes were burning,” said Monique Ruppel.
When she reached Celia’s crib and picked her up, the child began to vomit.
“At that same moment, one of my cats had collapsed at my feet and she was flat on the floor,” Monique Ruppel told the Province. “That was when we got pretty hysterical and realized something pretty serious was going on.”
Her husband called his parents to come pick them up, and the couple packed overnight bags and prepared to get into their truck. The grandparents arrived just as Kyle Ruppel began to black out.
“I remember thinking in that moment, ‘Is this what it feels like to die?’” he recalled. “Because there was nothing I could do to make my body respond to what my mind was telling me.”
His dad called 911 and the young family was rushed to Royal Inland Hospital in an ambulance.
After a quick assessment, Celia and her parents were put on a plane for Vancouver. By noon Friday, they were undergoing oxygen therapy at Vancouver General Hospital.
Monique’s co-workers at a veterinary clinic took over care of the animals, and by Saturday night all humans and animals had recovered and were back at home.
Throughout the ordeal, Monique Ruppel said, Celia has been “the best baby.”
“She was so compliant with having blood taken and just smiles, and has put up with so much,” said her mother. “Thank God for Celia. She’s our little guardian angel. That’s how we look at it. She absolutely saved our lives and she doesn’t even know it.”
While in Vancouver, the Ruppels learned that firefighters couldn’t even get past the home’s front door without their hand-held carbon monoxide detectors going off.
The couple are pleading with friends and family not to delay installing or checking carbon monoxide detectors. The Ruppels have also replaced their furnace, which was the source of the gas leak, and have installed three new detectors in their home.
“Don’t put it off as one of those things you can do later,” Kyle Ruppel said. “It’s one of those things you need to do, and you need to do it today — because tomorrow might be too late.”