Luck-key escape!
The keys pierced his eye
Thursday 15th January 2009
There were no words to describe it except complete and utter chaos. As my husband, Chris, 35, and I stood in the A&E department, alarms echoed down the corridor, and doctors and nurses raced around us with panic on their faces. But in the middle of it all, the person who was causing all this chaos was snuggled tightly to my chest, the picture of calm. My 17-month-old son, Nicholas.
'It's OK, darling,' I whispered, stroking his soft blond hair. 'The doctors are going to make you better.'
It was only then that I spotted a group of doctors huddled around a computer. Heart racing, I looked at the screen and saw an X-ray of a head. My son's head. Then I spotted it.
Jutting right through his eyeball and into his brain. My car keys!
'This can't be happening,' I gasped.
But one look at Nicholas's face, and the base of the keys to my Mazda car key sticking out of
his eyeball, and I was jolted back to reality.
Just two hours earlier, it had been an ordinary Tuesday night. Chris, Nicholas, our other sons, Isaac, 8, and Caleb, 5, and I had just got in from watching Isaac playing in a school baseball match.It was about 8.30 when we'd piled out of the car and into the house. But seconds later, there had been a piercing scream and I'd spotted Nicholas face down in the hall. At first, I thought he'd tripped and banged his head. But when I picked him up, I'd taken one look at his face and screamed in horror. There was no blood, just a neat incision where my car key had gone through the skin of his right eyelid, leaving the base of the key sticking out.
'I'm calling an ambulance!' I'd shrieked.
I'd looked around to see if the key had snapped off and was lying on the floor. When I couldn't find it, I'd sat Nicholas down on the settee and cuddled him until the ambulance arrived. The paramedics had arrived and examined him, but they called for an emergency helicopter straight away. Next thing I knew, it had landed in our front garden and Nicholas had been loaded inside on his way to the University of Kentucky Hospital, Lexington.
Chris had arranged for a neighbour to look after the other kids, then we'd followed in the car.
The hospital was an hour's drive from our home in Perryville, Kentucky, and now, Chris and
I had just arrived to see this shocking X-ray.
'We need to remove the key as soon as possible,' the surgeon said. 'But we don't know what damage has been done to Nicholas's eye or brain.'
All I could do was nod and kiss Nicholas goodbye as he was rushed down to theatre.
For two agonising hours, Chris and I paced the corridor. Then, the surgeon came to see us.
'We've removed the keys and his brain is fine,' he explained. 'But the eyeball's ruptured.'
'What does that mean?' I asked.
'Imagine it like a ball sitting in jelly,' he explained. 'The ball's moved out of place. We need to do another operation to try to save the eye.'
Then, for the second time that night, my little boy was taken down to the operating theatre.
This time, a specialist eye surgeon did the operation and it was 15 minutes before we heard from her.
'It's OK,' she smiled. 'We saved the eyeball.'
And there was more good news.
'It's a miracle,' the eye surgeon said. 'The eye has healed itself. I've stitched up his eyelid, but that's the only damage.'
'So his brain is OK?' I asked.
The surgeon nodded. Thank heavens.
For the next three days, Nicholas was in intensive care. Two days later, we were back home as if nothing had happened. We worked out that the accident must have happened after I'd put my car keys on the hall table. Nicholas had reached up to get them, then somehow stumbled onto them. He looks as good as new and his sight is better than ever. But from now on, I keep my car keys well out of reach.