A 10-year-old boy will make a “miraculous” recovery after being seriously injured with a meat skewer.
Xavier Cunningham fell from a tree house near his Missouri home on Saturday after being attacked by some wasps.
He landed on the skewer which then pierced his face and impaled his skull.
The Kansas City Star reports that Cunningham’s mother, Gabrielle Miller, heard screaming outside. She then ran downstairs to find her son in the house with the skewer protruding from his face.
She told the publication that Xavier said: “I’m dying, mom.”
The 10-year-old was rushed to hospital where doctors said that the skewer had missed Xavier’s brain, eye, and spinal cord. However, they said that removing the device was still going to be a high-risk operation.
Dr Koji Ebersole said that “major concern” was the blood vessels in Xavier’s neck.
He said:
“It required Xavier being on board with that plan.
“Because if he was going to get anxious or nervous and start moving around, he could move the device and cause significant injury that he had not yet incurred.”
Dr Ebersole called the operation “miraculous”, and said that he had never seen another injury where a patient would make a full recovery.
“I have not seen anything passed to that depth in a situation that was survivable, let alone one where we think the recovery will be near complete if not complete,” he said.
