Published: Monday, Mar. 15, 2010 / Updated: Monday, Mar. 15, 2010 04:49 PM

After being shaken, Rock Hill baby is alive but faces years of rehab

The January attack so badly injured Owen Carduff’s brain that doctors said the 4-month-old “would basically be a vegetable.”

Owen couldn’t move, eat or drink, and tests showed damage to most of his brain.

His mom and grandparents agreed to end life-support efforts. They moved Owen to a Rock Hill hospice, and they learned about baby caskets.

“Going into the hospice, we were really fearful,” said Larry Williams, Owen’s grandfather. “We knew we were going there to watch our grandbaby die.”

Then Owen’s mouth made a sucking motion.

Shaking uncontrollably

Just days earlier, Owen’s parents – Michael Carduff, 18, and Kayla Lythgoe, 19 – had taken the infant to Piedmont Medical Center because he was having seizures, according to a police incident report. He was jerking and shaking uncontrollably.

Owen also was bleeding from the brain. Doctors at PMC sent the baby by helicopter to Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, where he spent several days in critical condition.

Back in York County, police said Owen had been shaken. On Jan. 12, a day after Owen was taken to the hospital, authorities charged Michael Carduff with unlawful conduct toward a child. Carduff remains in jail without bond, awaiting an initial court hearing later this month.

Carduff’s attorney, Melissa Inzerillo, declined to comment.

Lythgoe has not been charged in the incident, York County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jerry Hoffman said. Her mother, Charlotte Williams, said Lythgoe was not home when the baby was injured.

Charlotte and Larry Williams said they would speak for the daughter for this story.

At Levine Children’s Hospital, doctors told Owen’s family that tests showed 70 percent of the baby’s brain was damaged.

“If we chose to keep him alive, the doctors told us Owen would basically be a vegetable,” Charlotte Williams said.

On the advice of doctors, the 4-month-old’s family removed the tubes that fed Owen and supported his breathing. “They said eventually he’ll just get exhausted and stop breathing,” Charlotte Williams said.

His family took him to the Wayne T. Patrick Hospice House in Rock Hill for the baby to live what they thought would be his final days on a morphine drip.

Going to hospice

Dr. Amy Robbins, Owen’s attending physician at hospice, said that when the baby arrived a week after being injured, he appeared to be a normal 4-month-old. But his brain wasn’t telling his body to do the things it should – he couldn’t eat or drink on his own.

Charlotte Williams recalled the moment she and her daughter realized that the covers of baby caskets aren’t split in half like adults’.

“I remember my daughter and I saying, ‘Oh no, he needs new shoes for the funeral,’” she said.

But after Owen’s first 24 hours in hospice care, the family got a flicker of hope. Owen started to form a sucking motion with his mouth, which he hadn’t done since the injury, Robbins said.

“It was clearly a change for the better,” Robbins said.

They started giving Owen small drops of water, unsure of whether his body knew how to swallow, Robbins said.

“They told us his body wouldn’t know what to do with food,” Charlotte Williams said. “That it could end up in his lungs and kill him.”

From the moment he started sucking, Robbins said, Owen continued to get better. He began to take a bottle, which he couldn’t do at the hospital, she said.

“Over the 24-to-48 hours after he got here, he just dramatically changed to where he was crying and fussing when he had a messy diaper,” Robbins said. “He was acting more like a normal baby.”

He started using parts of his body that doctors said he’d never use, Charlotte Williams said.

A touching moment for Robbins came during one of her examinations of Owen.

“I was holding him,” she said, “listening to his heart with a stethoscope, and he moved his arm and pinched the skin on the back of my hand – hard. He had no movement in that hand and arm before that.”

That helped convince Robbins that Owen didn’t need hospice; he needed a rehabilitation center.