A Tragedy, A Recovery and a Reminder

Posted under Local News

Once in a while I find a story that isn’t related to real estate or the southwest suburbs and I need to write about it. This one is about a little Palos Heights boy, John Dytrych, who spent 75 days in the hospital with only a 20% chance of surviving. He is recovering but does suffer from physical problems that require him to wear leg braces and he needs speech, physical and occupational therapy.

This all happened on January 24, 2007, when John’s Mom, Carrie, left John (then 21 months old) alone for a short time sitting in front of the tv. This is a family of four kids and at first when we read stories like this it is easy to blame the so-called negligent parent. Now, if you’re the most perfect parent in the world then I guess you could place blame. But with just three children I have not had my eyes on my kids every single second of the day. My goodness, we’d have to huddle them all together to accompany us to the bathroom every time we had to go, and that could be pointed out as another form of neglect!

When Carrie came back into the room she saw John holding one of several kerosene lamps that had been on display for 15 years (they were wedding presents). Her first reaction was that John would drop it. But soon after John passed out and that was the beginning of a long ordeal.

John was rushed to Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn. His doctors are surprised at his recovery as expectations were so low. John is expected to recover fully and I wish he and his family the best.

I kept a kerosene lamp around when my children were young and we even used it. It blended in well with my antique decor. After reading this story, I thank my lucky stars that none of my children decided it looked good enough to drink! We just don’t know how children see different things.

This is just a reminder that if you have children or grandchildren (like I do), you might need to go through the house and make sure all poisons are well out of reach. And you might have to rethink certain items, such as a kerosene lamp, that you wouldn’t even consider as a poison.