I have three sons. Adam is 17, Simon is 15. My baby, Nolan would have turned 12 this past December. But Labour Day weekend (last year) the unthinkable happened.
My beautiful son Nolan died as he slept in the family van while on a camping trip. Arriving late at night, he was tired and chose to sleep in the van instead of setting up his tent.
With every window closed to avoid mosquitoes, except one left open just a crack, he snuggled in.
Nothing risky. Nothing irresponsible. This harmless scenario plays out in campgrounds every long weekend, right?
Except for this time. This one time, the portable propane cooler sitting in the back of the van was forgotten. Every other time, the cooler was removed from the van as camp was set up.
This led to carbon monoxide filling the van undetected as Nolan slept, slowly taking his life.
I have been a nurse since 1988. I’ve worked in the ICU and the Burn Unit. Now I work as a patient safety specialist.
Part of my role is to understand the human factors that lead to errors that result in patient harm and try to make the system safer so that errors won’t happen again.
We know that human errors are inevitable so we try to find ways to make systems that make it easier to do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing.
Following Nolan’s death, from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, my identities as both nurse and mother came crashing together.
My professional training and logic told me “accidents happen.” But this was no consolation to my role as mom.
After taking three months off work, I emerged with a desire to do something.
Exactly what, I wasn’t sure. I wanted to scream questions at propane tank manufacturers . . . like, how could this happen and, why are there no automatic shut off valves? But honestly, I was nowhere near ready for that.
Telling people what happened, so they could avoid a similar accident, was a more obvious beginning. Except that my grief overruled every time I felt strong enough to take that first step.
That’s when a friend told me about John Gignac. John is the former firefighter who lost four members of his family to a carbon monoxide accident in 2008. He created the Hawkins-Gignac Foundation for CO Education in their memory and has spent… years warning people of the dangers of CO.
I reached out to him, and was graciously invited into his home to talk about my Nolan and his niece Laurie, her husband Richard and their kids Cassandra and Jordan.
We cried for our losses and smiled as we recalled happy memories of our loved ones.
John told me there is no perfect time to start my “something.” If I follow my heart, he said I would just know when the time was right to take that first step.
I think I just took it.
Culled from The Star
