THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 19, 1996 TAG: 9607170118
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: THUMBS UP
SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 84 lines
Steve Mathias pulled his pickup truck down the driveway and stopped feet from the break-neck traffic on Johnstown Road during rush hour.
Mathias' 4-year-old son, Austin, was by his side in the passenger seat. As Austin watched in horror, Mathias had a violent seizure.
Mathias, 34, began screaming. He bashed his head against the window repeatedly. He blacked out, and slumped backward.
The car was still in drive.
That's when Austin saved his father's life.
The two had stopped by Steve's mother's house on Johnstown Road. She wasn't home at the time.
Austin couldn't get his father to respond. He got out of his seatbelt, but couldn't open his door. So he climbed out the sliding back window that led from the truck's cab to the bed, then he hopped out of the bed and onto the ground.
The pint-sized boy went to the edge of the road. He crossed into the roaring traffic, headed for the home of Steve's uncle.
Across the street, 55-year-old Albert Mathias' doorbell rang.
Albert Mathias remembered being amazed that the boy had made it across the street.
My daddy's dying, Austin told his great uncle. I need help.
They got to the truck, where Albert found Steve slumped unconscious and drenched in sweat. Steve's eyes were wide open.
Albert said his nephew looked like a limp dish rag.
Albert didn't even think of a seizure. It had been more than 20 years since Steve suffered childhood seizures. He thought, ``Heart attack?''
Steve was healthy, though. A lean man who stayed in shape.
But those seizures were a thing of the past. Steve had had his last one in sixth grade. He'd stiffened up like a board. This time he was limp.
Steve had seen spots before his eyes before the childhood seizures had hit. He'd felt sick to his stomach.
He later said, ``This time, I didn't feel a thing.''
Steve was off medication by the time he left high school. Didn't that mean he was seizure free?
Albert saw the gear shift, still in drive. Somehow Steve's foot hadn't left the brake. The uncle reached in and put the car in park.
He tapped his nephew's sweaty face. No response.
Across the street, Albert's wife and daughter called 911. Then they contacted Steve's wife, Cindy. She was at their Chesapeake home with the couple's other son, 17-month-old Ryan.
Steve came to. There were paramedics. A local fire station had responded.
He blacked out again.
He awoke at Chesapeake General Hospital. Cindy was there.
Mathias was hooked to a heart monitor and an IV line. They were feeding him oxygen. Someone said, ``Let's do a spinal tap.''
That's when Mathias had another seizure.
Three days after it happened, Steve and Austin sat in the hospital room together.
Austin asked his father, ``Daddy, why were you screaming?''
Mathias knew nothing of this. He asked his son, ``What else did I do?''
Austin told him about banging the window.
Later, Mathias asked his son how he got across the street.
``They saw a little kid coming and they got out of the way,'' his son answered.
Several miracles took place that day, as far as the Mathias' are concerned. That the truck didn't drift into traffic. That Austin made it across rush hour traffic on a street where, as his father puts it, ``they don't go slow.''
Cindy Mathias said, ``If you could have seen angels, you would have seen them crossing the street with Austin.''
Since the seizure, doctors won't let Steve Mathias drive. Not for the next six months, anyway. They need to know if it will happen again.
It's tough, says Mathias. Cindy has to drive him to and from work from their home on Boston Avenue. She has been a source of incredible strength, her husband said. She has to drive him everywhere. Between that and the boys, it's a juggling act.
And there is constant aching. Mathias compared the experience of his seizure to being in a car accident.
But it could have been so much worse, and Mathias doesn't even like to think about what could have happened.
He is alive. And Austin is safe.
They have fortune and a son's bravery to thank. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by STEVE EARLEY
Four-year-old Austin Mathias went for help when his father Steve
Mathias had a seizure. by CNB