In the summer of 2020, Jake and Afton Kidman were out on their property enjoying a beautiful afternoon with their four kids—Maddox, Mabel, Sylvie and Forrest—in Monroe, Iowa. As the sun gently beat down on them, Afton began cleaning up after the dogs while Jake prepared to mow to the lawn. The kids were all enjoying themselves running from the goats to the chickens and back again. This went on for a while before Afton noticed Forrest was missing.
“I asked them where Forrest went and they just said, ‘I don’t know,’ and so I ran in the house,” Afton told us. “I came back out and told Jake I couldn’t find him and he just took off to our pond. I vividly remember asking him why he was going to the pond because we never went over there. I didn’t even think Forrest knew how to get there.”
As Jake made his way down the hill to the pond on the family’s property, he didn’t see Forrest anywhere and began to walk back up before giving it one more closer inspection. That’s when Jake discovered Forrest in the water hidden behind the dock. He had drowned and was not moving when Jake pulled him out of the water.
Forrest sits in his brand new Special Tomato chair with rolling base.
“Jake thankfully knew how to do CPR and started right away,” Afton recalls of the terrifying moment. “Neither one of us had our phone, so I had to run back to the house to call 911.”
Forrest spent a month in pediatric intensive care before being discharged to a rehab hospital. The original neurology team offered mostly grim news for Forrest’s future which didn’t sit well with his parents. It was at the rehab facility that Jake and Afton really began searching for better answers than their medical team was giving them, as they refused to allow Forrest’s future be predetermined by people who didn’t believe in their son.
In addition to physical and occupational therapy, Forrest has undergone both hyperbaric and stem cell therapy over the past 6 months and made some truly inspiring advancements. However, Forrest has a long road to recovery as his anoxic brain injury has caused global brain damage and severe physical impairments.
Jake and Afton wanted a new Special Tomato chair with rolling base so that he can have more access to his home and be appropriately seated with his family, especially during meals and family-time in the living room. Holton’s Heroes was happy to gift this item to them.
“He sits in it daily, and it’s nice because he’s now at our level instead of him always laying on the ground like he was before,” Afton told us. “It has a lot of good support for him. So, since his head control is not great, it helps him keep it in the right position.”
If you want to learn more about Forrest and follow his journey, you can visit their Facebook page Forrest’s Fight.
“The special tomato chair has been helpful in having Forrest be apart of our family activities. It’s supportive of his head and core so it works well for us to feed him in at family meal times. The mobile base is great for the kids to wheel him around to wherever they are playing. Bonus, it is aesthetically pleasing to have in the home!”
“Tonight, we feel the power of humanity in a bath chair. Go figure. Some people feel excited about cars and other luxuries, but here I am just wanting my boy to be bathed safely,” Joshua mom wrote to us after her son received his gift from Holton’s Heroes.