A 17-year-old is fighting for his life after suffering a freak accident on his last day of training with the San Diego Junior Lifeguard program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a phone call saying literally every parent\u2019s nightmare, saying that we need to perform life-saving measures on our son,” his mother, Courtney Renard, said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been almost one month since Courtney\u2019s son Finn had a life-changing accident while doing a routine training relay at Mission Bay. She said it is a tradition they do on their last day of training. She knows because her son had done the training program two years before.<\/p>\n
However, this time something unexpected happened.<\/p>\n
“He ran into the bay, and he dove in because his team was behind and he was trying to catch up and so he was going real fast and hard and he hit his head on the sand below and became unconscious,\u201d Courtney Renard said.<\/p>\n
His mother said a team of lifeguards rushed in to pull him out and took him to the hospital.<\/p>\n
Finn underwent emergency spinal surgery to stabilize his cervical spine.<\/p>\n
“They replaced his C-5 and then fused the 4 through 6 together,\u201d Renard said.<\/p>\n
His mother said days after his surgery, he appeared to be on the road to recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was great for a couple days after that. He was sitting up, talking. Lifeguards were coming and visiting him,\u201d Renard said.<\/p>\n
She thought soon they would be able to start rehab, but six days after the surgery Finn had to be intubated and eventually placed on life-support because he had been having trouble breathing on his own.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the beginning I thought I just want him to be able to walk again because right after surgery he was able to move his arms a little bit, but he wasn\u2019t able to move his hands, his legs, or his feet, so I thought that was going to be our uphill battle but truly right now, I want him to breathe on his own. I want him to live and breathe,\u201d Renard said.<\/p>\n
Finn\u2019s mother said it\u2019s been tough being patient with the journey.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the feeling of helplessness, when something happens to your kid, you want to take it on,\u201d Renard said.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the San Diego Lifeguard shared the following statement:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur San Diego Junior Lifeguard interns and staff are part of our Fire-Rescue family. Finn\u2019s injury has deeply affected our team, and we have remained in close contact with his parents. Our hearts are with Finn and his loved ones, and we will continue to offer our support throughout his recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Renard said they\u2019re hoping for a miracle and they\u2019re leaning on their faith to carry them through.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly prayer, we just need a lot of prayer,\u201d Renard said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 17-year-old is fighting for his life after suffering a freak accident on his last day of training…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1103,74,84,76,75],"class_list":["post-439170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-mission-bay","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}