A Sunshine Coast family has thanked a LifeFlight crew that saved a boy who suffered a severe anaphylactic reaction to hairy caterpillars.
Yarren was at Noosa Heads Lions Park with friends and family, climbing trees with his mates in 2023, when he passed out with a terrible rash.
His dad, Gregg, said Yarren ran over to his mother Rachael and told her he was ‘seeing rainbows’ before he vomited and collapsed.
Gregg and Rachael then tried to comfort their then six-year-old, who had seven seizures before paramedics arrived.
QAS rushed him to Noosa Private Hospital, where doctors intubated him and put him into an induced coma.
The Sunshine Coast LifeFlight aeromedical team, including aircrew officer Ryan Cross and Critical Care Doctor Hamish Brown, continued his medical care, flying him to Sunshine Coast University Hospital.
In an emotional reunion at the LifeFlight Sunshine Coast hangar, Dr Brown explained to Yarren and his family why it was so important that he was airlifted.
“You were very, very unwell,” he said.
“The 12-minute flight compared to the 45-minute trip by road was necessary because we didn’t really know why you were so critically unwell.
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“You were unconscious, you had a rash, your oxygen levels were low, you weren’t breathing properly, and your airways were compromised.
“Being inside the LifeFlight helicopter meant that you never left the intensive care unit environment.
“You were in that ICU bubble the entire time and we didn’t take our eyes off you during the flight.”
Gregg filmed the helicopter as it took off and was talking to his son as the chopper flew away because he thought he may not see his son again.
“I took a video of Yarren getting on the flight with his mumma and taking off and, to be honest, that was raw emotion,” he said.
“I was saying goodbye to him too, because my boy couldn’t breathe. As I started to talk to Yarren in that helicopter, I started to break down.”
Greg can be heard saying on the video: “I love you Yarren.”
“I love you little guy. I will see you soon. Love you beautiful.”
Gregg said the professionalism of the crew helped calm him.
“They were very methodical and calm,” he said. “But my mind wasn’t.”
“My mind was still running 100 miles an hour, because my little boy is laying there in an induced coma and we don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
Rachael said she only realised the seriousness of her son’s medical emergency weeks later.
“When you step back and you’ve got time to think about it, that’s when it hits you,” she said.
“When you realise that getting a helicopter to hospital is actually serious and it’s not a normal thing.”
“That’s when you go ‘you know what? I think my son’s life was on the line’.
“Without LifeFlight, I don’t think Yarren would be alive. I don’t think he would have got to the hospital in time.”
Greg said he took his family back to the park two weeks later to hunt for clues about what had made Yarren so sick, so quickly.
“I looked in the tree that they were playing with, and I was looking for spiders,” he said.
“I couldn’t see any spiders but then I looked underneath the tree, and underneath was loaded with hairy caterpillars, and their nests were everywhere.
“Yarren almost died from touching the nest of those hairy caterpillars.
“I can’t thank LifeFlight enough. They were so professional, so calm…they knew exactly what they were doing, and we felt like he was in great hands.
“Without LifeFlight, I would hate to think of some of the experiences or the endings that some families would have to go through.”
Dr Brown said reactions to hairy caterpillars were common, but usually limited to local reactions like rash, redness, itch and mild swelling.
“Anaphylaxis with some significant and severe systemic involvement is very rare,” he said.
“Yarren is the only child I have encountered clinically in 14 years working as a doctor to have suffered such a reaction.”
Yarren has recovered well and the family now carry an Epi-Pen everywhere they go.
At an emotional reunion at the LifeFlight Sunshine Coast base, he gave his rescue crew thank-you chocolates and gifted Dr Brown a colourful helicopter picture.
“It was pretty cool that I could go to the base and see the helicopter and the people who saved me,” Yarren said.
The Pomona family will be special guests at the upcoming LifeFlight Gala at the Novotel Sunshine Coast Resort on March 29.
Video to come.
