HARRISONVILLE, Mo. (AP) A 10-year-old Missouri 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, thats where Xavier Cunninghams bad luck ended. The skewer had completely missed Xaviers eye, brain, spinal cord and major blood vessels, The Kansas City Star reports .
Xaviers harrowing experience began Saturday afternoon when yellow jackets attacked him in a tree house at his home in Harrisonville, about 35 miles south of Kansas City. He fell to the ground and started to scream. His mother, Gabrielle Miller, ran to help him. His skull was pierced from front-to-back with half a foot of skewer still sticking out of his face.
Miller tried to reassure her son, who told her Im dying, Mom 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.
You couldnt draw it up any better, Ebersole said. It was one in a million for it to pass 5 or 6 inches through the front of the face to the back and not have hit these things.
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.
