A Minnesota mom goes into septic shock. What her 4-year-old son does next is astonishing

BIG LAKE, Minn. – A quick-thinking Minnesota 4-year-old saved the life of someone special to him - his mother.

Rachel Milless was sick with pneumonia and the flu when she dropped to the floor of their Big Lake home a few months ago. She was in septic shock.

"I went into a coughing fit and just couldn't get my breath and started to feel like I was drowning almost," Rachel said.

Milless' son, Asher, went for her nebulizer to help clear her airways.

"He was able to put my meds in my little cup, put it together, plug it in, put all the tubing in the right spot and give it to me, and then just told me to breathe," Rachel said.

Asher then called his grandparents, who reached his father, Tyler Milless, who was out of state.  

"The hardest part was trying to ask [Asher] a simple way if she was breathing," Tyler said.

Rachel says she was scared, but trusted everything was going to be OK.

Paramedics came and doctors told the Millesses that without Asher, Rachel probably wouldn't be alive.

He's now the youngest person to receive Sherburne County Sheriff's Office's Life Saving Award. Asher wants the plaque to hang in his room.

"He doesn't fully grasp the severity of what happened, but we are firm believers that we have to show him, and that's gonna be something that we can talk about for the rest of his life," Tyler said.

Adding to Asher's remarkable actions, his parents say they never even taught him how to use Rachel's nebulizer. He picked it up just from watching her.