In December 2015, Jon Kile, in his early 40s, had an ruptured iliac aneurysm, which was unusual but not unusual enough to assume life as he knew it would change forever. Surgeons fixed him and sent him home. Four months later his daughter, Anna, had a cold and stayed home from preschool. That’s when he collapsed. He tried to dial 911, but his fingers were too sweaty to use his iPhone. He blacked out.
What he didn’t know at the time — what he couldn’t have known — was he was having an aortic dissection, that his aorta’s layers were splintering and he was about to die.
When he came to, he saw Anna’s face, framed by tiny blonde curls, looking down at him, crying, “Daddy!”
He managed to dial 911, but he couldn’t tell the dispatcher where he lived. 911 triangulated the call and found him.
“She saved my life,” Kile says of his daughter. “I tell her that all the time.”
Read the full story from Creative Loafing Tampa Bay on how the Kile Family plans to have the best summer ever !
