We completed a 3 game sweep of the Rays over the weekend to settle the score for their sweep of us last weekend. Finally, our bats are coming around and we are scoring some runs.
On Friday we won 7-3 after a lengthy rain delay. Buchholz pitched well allowing just one run in 5.1 innings. Our bullpen kept the Rays at bay with Lopez, Delcarmen, Okajima and Paps all going without an earned run, although Lopez allowed two unearned. Pedroia continues to come up big with 3 rbi's. Moss hit a home run to help out our cold bats.
On Saturday, we won 12-4 with Beckett going 8 solid innings striking out 5. We scored 12 runs on 15 hits with Pedroia again getting 3 hits himself. The biggest stat of the game is none of our runs came by way of the home run. We did have 7 doubles and it was nice to Papi getting into it as well with 3 hits.
On Sunday, our starting pitching continued to pitch well as Lester went 6 innings giving up just one run. Paps got his 9th save of the year and we are beginning to hit again. Papi sat this one out with a sore knee, but Youk came up big in his place in the lineup with a career tying 4 rbi's going 3 for 4 with a home run. We went up against Scott Kazmir, who is coming off the DL and making his first start of the season. He has always pitched well against us posting an impressive 2.66 ERA in 17 career starts against Boston.
We have now won 5 of our last 6 and we have our biggest lead in the division so far at 3 games. I think the biggest story of the game from Sunday is our 5 stolen bases. I can't believe we now have a team with speed. We now have as many stolen bases on the season as we do home runs (26 in the first 33 games). That is something I thought I would never see. We always had a team with power, but the speed is something new. Our starting rotation it seems always goes at least 6 or 7 innings and at least for the last week or so is keeping the scoring down. I think we have a good chance this year!
One strange bit of news coming out of New Hampshire is the story of a female Yankee fan who is being
held without bail on the charge of murder. She evidently got into an argument with a Sox fan and when the argument spilled outside, the Yankee fan decided to run the Sox fan over in her car to settle the argument. Can you imagine her trial in New Hampshire. I hope the entire jury shows up in Red Sox hats!
Since mothers day is coming up in about a week, I thought I would put this story in here today. Now I routinely ask my son if he likes the Yankees and he always shakes his head "no!". When I ask him if he likes the Red Sox he always grins and says "Yes!". I found this news story about a small boy in Greece who was asked the same questions that I ask my son. Only for this boy, it was to determine if his brain was still functioning... Go ahead and read it - it has a happy ending!
Watching Cameron Knowles chase after the family cat and noisily play video games with little brother Zachary, it's hard to imagine that just a month ago the whirlwind 7-year-old lay dead on his bedroom floor for at least 12 minutes.
Around 7 a.m. on March 26, Mark Knowles came home from an overnight shift at his part-time emergency medical technician job with the North Greece Fire Department. Coming in the door, he inadvertently set off the burglar alarm.
He stopped at the bathroom to chat with his wife as she dressed for her job as a medical assistant at a Brighton cardiology office.
They both wondered why Cameron, a first-grader at Greece's Holmes Road Elementary School, hadn't bounded out of his room when the alarm shrieked.
"I thought I'd better go check on him, and it was time for him to get up for school anyway," said Mark Knowles, 33. "When I got there, he wasn't moving. At first I thought he was playing possum, 'cause he's that kind of kid, but I checked for a pulse and didn't find one."
He cried out to his wife, Rebecca, who ran in and probed Cameron's neck and wrist for signs of life.
"I said, "He's gone, Mark, he's gone,'" said Rebecca.
She pulled her son's lifeless, pajama-clad body from his bed and started CPR. Mark dialed the Greece Ridge Fire Department, where he works full time as a dispatcher and emergency medical technician.
"I said 10 words: 'My son is unconscious, get a squad to my house,'" he said.
Firefighter Mark Quill and EMT Kevin Clarke pulled their rig up to 1296 Weiland Road just minutes later. "Every call you go on is important, but when it's someone you work with and a kid you see all the time at the firehouse visiting his dad, it's different," said Quill, a four-year member of the Fire Department.
He's been on dozens of cardiac arrest calls. There are few happy endings.
"In this business, usually the worst calls are pediatric cardiac arrest," said Clarke.
Once inside the Knowles' house, Quill hunkered down to deliver Cameron oxygen. Clarke hooked up an automated external defibrillator, or AED. Battalion Chief Andrew Paradiso assisted.
It was the first time anyone from Greece Ridge ever used an AED on a child.
"We gave him one shock, and kept up CPR, then a crew from Monroe Ambulance came," said Quill. "They shocked him two more times and started pushing meds."
Cameron's heart started to beat again. But, his father said, he'd been down at least 12 minutes, more than twice the five it can take to cause severe, irreversible brain damage.
As medical professionals all their lives, both Mark and Rebecca — both certified EMTs — knew Cameron's chances for full recovery were slim.
"Everyone kept telling me at the hospital that I was a hero," said Rebecca, 32. "But I didn't know what kind of hero I was. We didn't know if we'd saved his brain. I didn't know what kind of life he would have, what decisions we would have to make."
With Cameron's heart pumping again, EMTs whisked him to Unity Hospital at Park Ridge, where doctors slipped a breathing tube down his throat while a pediatric intensive care unit team from Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong rushed from Rochester to Greece to retrieve him.
Dr. Andrea Hinkle, a pediatric critical care fellow at Golisano, was part of that team.
At first look, Cameron's prognosis was grim. According to the American Heart Association, less than 7 percent of all children who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital survive long enough to ever be discharged from a hospital. When there is significant time without a heartbeat, fewer still ever regain normal brain function.
"We were worried," said Hinkle. Although Cameron's heart was beating and he was breathing with assistance by the time he got to Park Ridge, she said, he was displaying some of the classic, jerky movements associated with brain trauma.
"It is very rare for a child with cardiac arrest to survive intact."
Blood tests given later at Golisano, however, showed Cameron had enough circulation from the CPR and defibrillation to keep his kidneys and liver working. Like the brain, those organs also fail if deprived of oxygen too long during cardiac arrest.
"Although the tests weren't absolutely predictive, we didn't see anything with his kidneys and liver," said Hinkle. "That's where we were beginning to become hopeful."
To help save Cameron's brain, Golisano doctors sedated him heavily and slowed his metabolism by lowering his body temperature to 34 degrees Celsius (about 93 degrees Fahrenheit) for a day. Over an additional 14 hours, they slowly brought his body temperature back to a normal 37 degrees Celsius (about 99 degrees Fahrenheit.)
Warmed up, on March 29 Cameron started fighting against his breathing tube.
Mark returned from errands that afternoon to find his wife sobbing in Cameron's room.
"I was crying because I was happy," said Rebecca.
Watching Cameron awaken, nurse Staci Goldstein had asked two questions that left his parents no doubt their boy's brain was OK.
"She said, 'Cameron, do you like the New York Yankees?' and he shook his head no," said Rebecca. "Then, she asked, 'Do you like the Boston Red Sox?' and he nodded yes."Hinkle said Cameron's quick-acting parents and the first responders apparently kept the boy's blood flowing well enough to prevent serious damage.
"He had a really excellent resuscitation by the first responders, and we have to give everybody a lot of credit," Hinkle said, adding that she and Cameron bonded during his stay over their mutual love of the Red Sox. "But we deliver the same level of care even to Yankees fans."
A thoughtful, caring boy
Cameron, who returned full time to Holmes Road Elementary School this week, has a heart condition called long QT syndrome. The illness is a hereditary disorder of the heart's electrical rhythm that affects the time it takes for beating heart muscle to contract and then recover to beat again.
The disorder, which usually affects children and young adults, can occur in otherwise healthy people and often shows no symptoms until sudden cardiac death.
That's what happened to Cameron on the day now known as his "second birthday."
The Knowles family wants to get the word out about long QT syndrome and the importance of being screened. After Cameron's cardiac arrest, they all got tested. As it turns out, Mark has the ailment too but is controlling it now with medications.
"For a lot of kids, long QT is discovered far too late," said Rebecca. "You can't diagnose it post-mortem."
The family is selling bracelets to benefit the Cardiac Arrhythmias Research and Education Foundation. Cameron has his own American Heart Association Web page to raise funds for heart research. His classmates are jumping rope today to raise money in his honor.
Teacher LuAnn Principe said her class was "devastated" to learn Cameron was ill.
"When you mention his name, the first thing you do is smile because that's the first thing you see on his face," she said. "He's an intelligent, thoughtful, caring young boy."
She said today's planned Jump-A-Thon is a way for the kids to turn feelings into action.
"Writing him cards and letters helped, but this is something else they can put their energies in," she said. "They want to help with cures and research so some other 7-year-old won't have to go through what Cameron went through."
Cameron doesn't remember much of his ordeal, not even how he called the first doctor he saw after waking "an idiot" for sticking a needle in his arm or how he later asked for a chocolate doughnut.
Because of long QT, he'll never be able to participate in competitive or contact sports. He'll always need an implanted defibrillator. His family keeps a red-boxed AED tucked in a corner of their living room.
He came home on April 11, brother Zachary's 5th birthday.
Despite getting a television set and a skateboard, Zachary says his best present that day "was having my brother Cameron come home."
Cameron giggled, throwing himself on the couch cushions, pulling up his red Boston Red Sox No. 24 Manny Ramirez shirt to show off the zipper scar bisecting his chest.
Surgeons told him to call it his "chick magnet."
He does.
Then, giving a gap-toothed grin, he turns serious.
"Mommy," he said. "You do so many nice things for me. Thank you for giving me CPR."
Happy Mothers Day!
