Parents of baby who died during routine sleep study get $15M

Boston Children’s Hospital has paid $15 million to the parents of a baby boy who died after being left without enough oxygen for more than 30 minutes during a routine sleep study.

Like his parents, Jackson Kekula was born with dwarfism, which left him with sleep apnea and needing oxygen.

When he was 6 months old in February last year, he went to the children’s hospital for a second round of what was supposed to be a routine car-seat test and sleep study.

Less than an hour after he was put in the seat, he went into cardiac arrest and suffered a traumatic brain injury from spending too long without oxygen as staff focused on fiddling with machinery, according to a detailed timeline by the Boston Globe.

Just 12 days later, his parents, Ryan and Becky, made the agonizing decision to take him off care.

“We went from February 18th just doing a routine study — to March 2nd to saying goodbye [and] March 3rd calling the funeral home,” grieving mom Becky Kekula told WBZ-TV.

Video of the sleep test showed that Jackson started whimpering just three minutes after it started at 9:39 p.m., the family’s attorney, Robert Higgins, told the Globe.

Within 10 minutes, his oxygen readings started plummetting — and at 9:50 p.m. had dropped to 65%, a perilously low level that can cause organ failure, the paper noted.

By then, mom Becky felt her baby’s fussiness “seemed off.”

“Of course looking back, I wish we just were like, ‘Can we go home? Do this another time?’ But I still wanted to trust the process,” she told the paper.

As Jackson’s oxygen levels continued to drop, his heart rate also began to falter, plummeting from 104 beats per minute to just 40. Soon, his breathing also fell from the expected rate of around 64 breaths per minute to just six to eight.

“I definitely started getting more of a spidey sense of ‘What the heck is happening,’” recalled his mom — with hospital staff constantly checking equipment but not examining the fast-faltering baby.

A technician first looked at Jackson at 10:11 p.m. — 32 minutes into the test, and more than 20 minutes after his oxygen levels plunged to dangerously low levels.

They only seemed to realize something was seriously wrong at 10:21 p.m., soon before the lab lights were switched on and the technicians picked up and tried to wake up Jackson, with one saying, “Come on. Hello, buddy.”

A nurse rushed in and started CPR. “They were able to revive him and get a pulse, but at that point there had been a severe traumatic brain injury,” dad Ryan told WBZ-TV.

“How do we say goodbye to our son? Or do we bring our son home and make the best of this? It was just a decision that we weren’t prepared for,” he said.

Mom Becky said one of the hardest things now is seeing other parents vowing to “always protect” their kids.

“In that moment, there was nothing I could do to protect him,” she told the Globe.

The Kekulas met with attorneys the day after their son died, and on June 15 sent a notice letter of a potential claim.

Months later, before they filed a lawsuit, Boston Children’s Hospital agreed to the $15 million payout.

“We express our deepest condolences and apologize to the family for the loss of their son,” a spokesperson for the hospital told WBZ-TV.

The hospital “immediately stopped all sleep studies and began a thorough review of what occurred,” and “identified and implemented several improvements for how we conduct” them, the rep said.

“After this review and implementation of these improvements, sleep studies were reinstated in a phased manner to ensure patient safety.”

The hospital would not say if staff involved in Jackson’s case were still employed, the Globe said.

Now, the Kekulas want to try for another baby, exploring IVF as it allows for screening of potentially fatal genetic abnormalities.

“We just emotionally don’t want to face another tragedy, if we can prevent it,” Becky said.

“We’re now struggling to grow our family, when we had a perfect boy,” Becky said of the “accident that could have been prevented.”