Boy in Minnesota survives fall that sent arrow through his brain: ‘It's a miracle'

The Guardian

4 days ago

A hospital in Minnesota was left in disbelief after a nine-year-old boy survived an accidental fall that sent an arrow through his brain and nearly out the back of his skull.
Abby Deterding recently told the Minneapolis news station KARE 'it's a miracle' that the freak mishap did not kill her son, Gus. 'We're just thankful, so grateful,' she said.
As his parents recount it, Gus was helping his father, Dave, pack up his truck for a hunting trip in March when he slipped on the icy driveway outside their home in Alexandria, about 130 miles north-west of Minneapolis.
A youth bow and arrow were among the items Gus was carrying at the time he slipped. And he fell face-first on the arrow, which penetrated his head just to the right of his nose.
Gus pulled the arrow out of his head by himself and immediately went to see his mother, who was vacuuming inside, KARE reported. He evidently was not bleeding much but was panicked.
'He kept saying, 'Mom, am I dying? Am I going to leave you? I don't want to leave you yet,'' Abby Deterding recalled her son saying. She said she told Gus he would be OK and they were just going to the hospital to get some stitches.
A cautious emergency room doctor had Gus flown by helicopter to Children's Minnesota hospital in Minneapolis, where staffers observed him a few hours before releasing him home. But, after getting home, Gus began vomiting, and his parents brought him back to the hospital, which took head scans of the boy.
The scans contained a startling revelation, as KARE noted: the arrow had pierced through the middle of Gus's brain and came within less than an inch of exiting his skull.
'It literally took my breath away, and I felt sick to my stomach,' Abby Deterding said to the outlet about what it felt like for her to see those scans. 'I couldn't believe it.'
She said she remembered thinking: 'No, that far, what?''
Adding to the confusion was the fact that Gus seemed to be fine while in a hospital bed nearby.
The medical director of the Children's Minnesota's pediatric intensive care unit, Dr Ken Maslonka, reportedly said to KARE that he had 'never seen anything like this' in his 28-year career.
'He looked too normal,' Maslonka said.
Maslonka told the outlet that he had created a model meant to show the trajectory of the arrow that went into Gus's head. Had he seen his model without already knowing the outcome, Maslonka said he would have assumed the injury depicted was fatal.
Gus, though, was showing no ill effects from the wound a few months after it had occurred, prompting Maslonka to attribute that to either 'fortune' or 'God controlling the direction of that arrow'.
Abby and Dave Deterding said it was their opinion that Gus's survival was miraculous rather than lucky.
'We know,' Dave Deterding said, 'it didn't just happen.'