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“It was just a typical late afternoon,” said Mike. “We had the two younger girls (Brooklyn and Katelyn) taking a bath, and Jordan and his friend were getting ready to take our truck out for a ride. It’s just an old beat up truck we’d been working on, and it was idling in the driveway. I was playing with our youngest, 16-month-old Alex.”
The radio in the truck wasn’t working right so Mike went out the back door of his house in Bountiful and helped his oldest son reconnect a loose wire. He quickly returned and noticed how quiet the house was…just as he could hear the truck start up.
“I started looking for Alex,” Mike said. “I went back to the bedroom, and he wasn’t there. Then I went out to the front room, and he wasn’t there. I walked into the kitchen area, and just then I could see the truck had been backed up.”
Moments later, Mike heard Jordan scream for his father. It was at that moment Mike knew, only as a parent knows when disaster has stuck their home. A second and more piercing scream of “Dad” came from Jordan as the side door of the house flew open.
There Jordan, a Viewmont student, stood with Alex’s limp blood-soaked body.
Somehow, baby Alex had gotten outside when Mike was working on the truck’s radio without the father knowing it.
The truck had backed over Alex’s head.
“My thought was, ‘I’ve just lost both of my sons and my family,’” Mike said. “My baby was dead, Jordan and the rest of my family was never going to get over this, and I was going to lose them, too. At this moment, my life was over.”
Mike had seen it before in his law enforcement career. Families torn apart by accidental tragedies, never to be the same again and here he was in the midst of such a story.
And then a switch clicked.
“Mike went into police mode,” Alex’s mother Jennice said. “He was able to set his emotions aside and get to work.”
Mike wiped the blood away from his baby’s head and looked for a head injury. There was none. The blood continued to pour, but from Alex’s mouth and nose. Mike knew his son was suffering from some sort of internal injury. And then realized Alex was breathing.
Jennice grabbed the baby nose syringe and helped Mike suck the blood out of Alex’s mouth and nose.
“He was breathing, and so I knew we had a chance,” Mike said.
Within minutes the house was full of paramedics and police officers, most of whom already knew Mike through work. A Life Flight chopper had landed at a nearby park, and the emergency workers finally moved Alex to the chopper while Mike and Jennice had to wait to hear which hospital he was being taken to.
“From the time the accident happened, to this very day, we have been loved and supported by so many people,” Mike said. “On that first day it was amazing how many people stepped up to help our family.”
The Werslands arrived at Primary Children’s Medical Center and were given a brief explanation concerning Alex’s condition. Along with several fractures and broken bones, Alex’s left carotid artery was not just severed but destroyed.
“You couldn’t even see it from the CT scan,” Mike said. “You could see the right one, but the left one had been destroyed.”
Alex had been medically paralyzed, and Mike and Jennice were allowed to see their son briefly. Family members including Jordan, Alex’s grandparents Swen and Dora Wersland, Bill and Marsha Nicholson were all there to support Alex’s parents.
Alex was given a blessing by his grandfather, Bill Nicholson, an ordinance they considered sacred due to the family’s LDS faith.
“As the blessing was given, I kept waiting to hear that he would release Alex’s spirit from his body,” Mike said. “But (Bill) never said that. He actually said that Alex would have a full recovery. I was shocked.”
The next day as doctors prepared for one of Alex’s major surgeries doctors needed an angiogram. Once the procedure was complete, pediatric neurosurgeon Marion Walker asked the Werslands to come into his office.
“I thought for sure she was getting us ready for bad news,” Mike said, “but what she said we weren’t at all ready for.”
Dr. Walker said, “I have no medical explanation for what I am going to tell you. That carotid artery has completely healed itself and so much so that I cannot even tell where it was injured.”
The miracle of the carotid artery was just one of a series of miracles that the Werslands and baby Alex have been blessed with.
“When I look back on the day this all happened and the way Jordan was able to pick his baby brother up and get him in the house to me with all that blood…it shows the kind of courage Jordan has and the love he has for his brother,” Mike said.
“The nose syringe Jennice used to get the blood out of Alex’s airways…we hadn’t been able to find that syringe in months, and yet there it was on the kitchen counter when we needed it. Where did it come from?”
Miracles continued to happen and baby Alex returned home about two weeks after the initial accident.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Mike said. “God has a plan. Sometimes spirits are just too big for this world…they have to leave this earth somehow. It wasn’t Alex’s time, and there is no other way to explain why this little guy is fine today. No long-term affects from such a tragedy.
“Call it what you want, but we can only call it a miracle.”
sschulte@davisclipper.com
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