‘A completely freak accident’
Teenager blinded in one eye advocates for safety at home
A simple chore. A loose rock. A life altered forever.
Nolan Chisholm was using a ride-on lawn mower on Father’s Day last year when a stone got caught in the blades and cast out from underneath the machine. It bounced off the teen’s family home in Scotsburn, Pictou County, and hit him in the left eye.
“There was a gathering here at the house,” Nolan recalled in a telephone interview earlier this week. “It had just finished up, everyone left, and I went out and got on the lawn tractor.”
He had started cutting the lawn earlier and was resuming the chore to finish the final half. He got about 4.5-6 metres along before the accident.
As soon as it happened, he tried to remain calm.
“This is as bad as it’s going to get,” he told himself. “It’s not going to get any worse than this.”
He went back inside and reassured his family that he was alright, although he wasn’t sure of the extent of the injury.
“I assumed it was going to be pretty bad because of what was on my hand — the blood and the fluid from my eye — and showed my parents and they took me in to the hospital and it turns out I had a ruptured globe.”
The wound has left him completely blind in that eye.
Now finishing Grade 10, Nolan is an advocate for everyday safety and recommends everyone use safety glasses when working around the yard.
As well as sharing his story with media, he’s speaking to a First Nations group this week. He’s willing to speak at any school or to any group who wishes.
The 16-year-old attends Northumberland Regional High School.
After the accident, the young man realized he had to adapt to his new reality and took on the challenge.
“It started out with … walking. Just getting used to walking and everything because it was obviously completely different from being normal to almost starting over but not quite. It took a couple of weeks, I would say, to adjust to it and after that it was just, as you do different things you learn more how to do them with one eye. (The) adjustment
went pretty well and pretty quick, actually.”
He now wears a prosthesis
called a scleral shell over his left eye.
It was harder on his mom Brandy and dad Jason than on himself, Nolan said.
He’s looking forward to getting back into mountain bike racing and he still dreams of becoming a helicopter pilot or RCMP officer.
Nolan will also get back on the lawn tractor, too, he said, although with proper safety equipment from now on.
“Expect more than what you think will happen,” he advises. “Because that was a completely freak accident that happened to me. You wouldn’t have thought that would ever happen because it came out of the non-eject side of the lawn mower and off the house and back at me.”