Mum Melissa Aho experienced all parents’ worst nightmare: receiving a call from a stranger saying her child is in the hospital. Now she’s sharing her daughter Ryleigh ’s harrowing experience to warn others about the dangers of underage drinking.
“This past Saturday night my 15 year old daughter asked me to sleep at a friends house and go to the moves. I said yes,” Melissa says in her post. “She has always been very good at communicating with me and checking in with me.
“But her plans changed that night and the series of events that followed are nothing that any family should have to experience…”
According to Melissa, she received a Facebook message from someone at one in the morning.
As it turned out, someone had received a phone call about her daughter Ryleigh and that she was passed out somewhere; she was hearing the news second-hand.
“Immediately my heart sank and I tried to call her phone repeatedly and of course there was no answer,” the mother recalls. “I questioned who, where, when, why’s… and received no answer back because that girl was already in route of finding the girl who called her and my daughter, picked them up and brought them to my driveway.”
Melissa opened the car door and found her daughter inside the car; she was covered in vomit and foaming at the mouth.
Despite her many questions, all Melissa knew was that her daughter had been drinking vodka all night. She didn’t know if her daughter had taken anything else that night.
Thankfully, 911 was on their way already and Ryleigh was immediately transported to the hospital.
Intubated, Ryleigh was then rushed to University of Massachusetts Medical Center where doctors informed Melissa that her daughter no longer breathing on her own.
Rylie, pictured next to her mother. | Image source: Facebook / Melissa Aho
Read Melissa’s Facebook post in full on the next page!
Melissa writes:
“I suffered 14 long hours pleading and begging for my daughter’s life, experiencing flashbacks from the moment she was born, to her first smile and giggle, the first time she said Mumma, her first step, her 1st birthday, her first day of school, her first friendship, sleepover, sickness, her graduation of middle school, our private mother daughter moments, laughing, joking, running, snuggling and so forth, I was thinking of her siblings and what losing her would do to them and the rest of her family and all of the people that love her.”
Thankfully, Ryleigh woke up; she is now recovering at home from breathing issues and other injuries she sustained while drunk.
In retrospect, Melissa realized that most of the teens her daughter was with didn’t even want to call the authorities because they didn’t want to get into trouble.
Thankfully there was one person in the group who didn’t care and did the right thing by calling her.
“That one girl saved my daughter’s life by contacting someone who could get ahold of me and if it were not for her the reality of it is I would be burying my daughter this week,” Melissa says.
“Parents share this with your children so they can see the dangers of underage drinking and what it can do!!!”
*This story is from our archives.