When Kimberly Smith told her son that she just needed to lie down after getting chest pains and having trouble breathing, he suspected that there was something very wrong going on. Though only 9-years-old, Camdyn Smith listened to his instincts — and it saved his mom's life.
Kimberly, a single mom of three, was convinced that she just needed to take a moment to put her newborn baby down and take a nap to sleep off the pain. Camdyn, however, wasn't so sure.
"When I got home she had trouble breathing, and she said it hurt whenever she took a breath, so I told her she needed to go to the hospital, but she kept saying she just wanted to stay here," he told local news station KING5.
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When his mother continued to resist, Camdyn took action.
“I kept saying that we needed to go," he told KING5. "So, I just went and got my shoes and coat on and told her we needed to go."
When the Smiths got to a doctor's office, they immediately called an ambulance to take her to the hospital, where emergency room doctors found that both her lungs were full of blood clots, a condition known as pulmonary embolisms. If Kimberly hadn't gone to the doctor, the clots could have damaged her lungs or other organs in her body. In some cases, blood clots can be big enough to be fatal.
"If I had taken the nap, there's a good chance it would've been a very different outcome," she told KING5 about listening to her son. "A sad one."
According to KING5, Camdyn learned about the signs of pulmonary embolisms from his physical education teacher, Timathi Fitzpatrick, who had suffered from one herself and made it a point to teach her students about the signs.
His mother, meanwhile, is just grateful for her son.
"He is definitely my hero," she told KING5. "They say your life flashes before your eyes, and it's true. It makes you look at your kids in a whole different way."
Kimberly is expected to go back to work in a few weeks. In the meantime, a GoFundMe account has been set up to help pay for medical expenses.