A 10-year-old US boy is recovering after he was attacked by insects and tumbled from a tree, landing on a meat skewer that penetrated his skull from his face to the back of his head.
But miraculously, that's where Xavier Cunningham's bad luck ended. The skewer had completely missed Xavier's eye, brain, spinal cord and major blood vessels, The Kansas City Star in Missouri reports.
Xavier's harrowing experience began on Saturday afternoon when yellow jackets attacked him in a tree house at his home in Harrisonville, about 56km south of Kansas City. He fell to the ground and his mother, Gabrielle Miller, ran down the stairs when she heard screaming. His skull was pierced from front to back with 15cm of skewer still sticking out of his face.
Miller tried to reassure her son, who told her "I'm dying, Mum" as they rushed to the hospital. He eventually was transferred to the University of Kansas Hospital, where endovascular neurosurgery director Koji Ebersole evaluated the wound.
X-ray of a skewer that pierced the skull of Xavier Cunningham. Source: Fox4 TV
"You couldn't draw it up any better," Ebersole said. "It was one in a million for it to pass five or six inches through the front of the face to the back and not have hit these things."
There was no active bleeding, allowing the hospital time to get personnel in place for a removal surgery on Sunday morning that was complicated by the fact that the skewer wasn't round. Because it was square, with sharp edges, it would have to come out perfectly straight. Twisting it could cause additional severe injury.
"Miraculous" would be an appropriate word to describe what happened, Ebersole said.
Doctors think Xavier could recover completely.
"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.
Xavier Cunningham has had a miraculous escape after falling on a meat skewer that pierced his skull. Source: AAP
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