Before he returned upstairs, Oliver heard a thud. He thought it was one of his dogs in his room, but he also knew his mom, Niki, was ill in her bathroom.
Oliver went to check on his mom in the bathroom and she didn’t respond. The 10-year-old was able to push the door open (his mom was against it), and she was “just knocked out.”
“The first thing I said is, ‘I got to call grandma,’” Oliver said. “Then, after that, I called 911. I was panicking.”
Minutes later, emergency crews were at the Fordsom Heights home in Hamilton’s North End. Oliver was with family, and dad and husband Jeff Ware raced from work to be by his family’s side.
“He’s all our hero,” said Jeff.
Niki Ware doesn’t remember anything that happened — not the falling ill, not the responding to Oliver before he went downstairs, nor the apparent screaming. She remembered entering the restroom, but the next thing she recalled was waking up at Kettering Health Hamilton’s emergency department.
“I didn’t feel good that entire day,” she said. “I had an earache, and I went to pick him up from school. My friends were telling me, ‘Yeah, you don’t look right.’”
Jeff was at work when he got “a frantic call” from his mother-in-law. “I bolted,” he said. “I probably got to Kettering Health in a much faster way than I intended.”
Oliver’s quick action is a big reason why Niki and Riley are healthy today.
Niki was previously treated for pre-eclampsia that week, but went into eclampsia on May 2.
Pre-eclampsia is a hypertensive disorder, and is when a woman has high blood pressure during pregnancy. With eclampsia, a lot of bad things happen, such as seizures, which Niki experienced.
Niki’s blood pressure was “through the roof,” said Taylor Sobe, one of the maternity nurses at Kettering Health Hamilton. “Not everybody’s pre-eclampsia, but it’s something they monitor in every pregnancy,” she said.
Oliver isn’t just the hero of his family, he’s the hero of the medical staff, said Registered Nurse Sobe, who worked day shift.
“He’s our hero, too,” she said. “Time is vital in a situation like that, for mother and for baby. Had she kept having seizures, that takes away the oxygen from the baby. Time is a huge factor in the outcome.”
Niki’s arrival happened as day shift and night shift in the labor and delivery department were switching. She ended up having another seizure while in the emergency department. Sobe sent out an “SOS” and Nurse Lacey Cameron, who was scheduled to be on the night shift, came in early to help with an emergency C-section.
Niki lost a lot of blood and “had to have a whole lot of things” to make sure she ended up healthy, Cameron said.
Oliver, who is a rising fourth-grader at Fairwood Elementary, had learned about calling 911 both at home and at school. He said he remembers learning in first grade about what to do in an emergency.
“There was this whole entire section, for like two months, where we learned when to call 911, how to call 911 and only to call 911 when it’s an emergency,” he said.
Also, it was a few weeks beforehand mom and dad were debating if he was old enough and responsible enough to have his own cellphone.
“Thank goodness we did that, because he grabbed his phone and called 911,” Jeff said.
About the Author
