After 35-year-old Mary Constant had a stroke, her five-year-old daughter, Praia, saved her life.
Mary lost consciousness at her home in Cork, Ireland, after suffering a stroke. Her five-year-old daughter, Phraya, reached out to her father Damien Gelvin using an iPad while he was driving to work. She told her father, «Mom is lying on the floor and can’t get up.» Damien said that he usually doesn’t answer calls while driving, but that day he decided to pick up the phone. He told me: «I saw her name on the phone and just decided to pick up the phone, which I don’t usually do, but I just had a feeling for some strange reason that I needed to answer the call.»
She cried and said that Mom had been drinking tea, and now she was lying on the floor and couldn’t get up. I asked her what she meant and she just kept saying that Mom was lying on the floor and couldn’t get up.
Then the little girl turned the camera, and her father saw his wife lying on the floor. He added: «She turned the camera so I could see her, and that’s when I noticed Mary lying on the kitchen floor.» Then Damian called Mary’s sister and parents and called an ambulance. They rushed her to the hospital, and the doctors told them that Mary’s life was saved thanks to their daughter’s quick thinking.
«The ambulance arrived about 40 minutes later and Mary was examined within seconds; she had a scan and that’s when we found out she had a stroke. A blood clot got into the left side of her brain, and that part completely shut down.”
«The surgeon told us that with a stroke, time is precious and that without the girl, Mary would not be here with us today.» Praia learned to use FaceTime on her iPad just a few months ago to call her cousin, grandparents.
Damien praised his daughter for her heroic act and said he would never ask her to stop using the iPad because she saved her mother’s life. We all tell our children that they are sitting on their tablets and all that, but she saved her mother’s life.» Mary walks and talks. She stands up and moves her arms. She comes down the stairs and walks with me, her sister and her parents. I hope everything will be fine, she will be home by the weekend.»