JUGULAR SLASHED BY A SKATE A MONTH AGO, HOCKEY TEEN IS READY TO PLAY.
Survives a severed jugular vein during a bantam hockey game
Kevin Cooper saw his 13-year-old son Jason fall during his hockey game in Boucherville and skate toward the bench.
Cooper hadn’t seen his injury, but when he heard there was blood on the ice, he raced down from the top of the stands.
“He’s been injured before, but I just had a feeling that it was something serious,” Cooper said last week at the family’s South Shore home.
“I can’t explain. I just ran on the ice.”
The play was still going on when Cooper jumped over the boards on Dec. 7 at the Centre Sportif Pierre-Laporte. He moved his son’s neck guard and saw the gash. An opposing player’s skate had accidentally severed Jason’s jugular vein, although that confirmation only came later at the hospital.
“I’ll never forget his face. It was like terror, you know,” Cooper said.
Cooper, a Longueuil police officer with first-aid training, applied pressure to the wound to staunch the bleeding and shouted, “Call 911!”
Louis Larue was in the stands waiting for his twin sons’ peewee game to start when he heard Cooper’s cries for help. He rushed onto the ice, thinking it was a ruptured carotid artery.
“He said, ‘ I’m an emergency room doctor.’ So I was like, ‘Oh good, there’s a doctor in the house,’ ” Cooper recounted with a laugh of his relief.
Larue, who works at HôtelDieu de Lévis near Quebec City, took over from Cooper, applying pressure to Jason’s wound.
“The little guy was really afraid,” Larue said.
“The first thing he said to me was, ‘Am I going to die?’ ” from Larue’s sons’ peewee team. Three lifeguards from the adjacent pool also came onto the ice.
The coach said his initial reaction was to clear the bench and ice and send everybody into the room.
“It was hell in the dressing room too, trying to calm the kids down,” Brousseau said. “I had kids that were screaming, kids that were crying.”
Larue used gauze and the bleeding stopped right away, the compression creating a clot in the jugular vein, he said.
With bleeds in the neck if the compression isn’t done in a quick, effective way, a
The little guy was really afraid. The first thing he said to me was, ‘Am I going to die?’ LOUIS LARUE
No, Larue reassured Jason.
“I said: ‘Don’t worry. Breathe, stay calm and in a month and a half you’ll play hockey.’ ”
Serge Brousseau, the coach of the Phoenix du Richelieu bantam Double-B team, tossed the first-aid kit on the ice.
There were two nurses at the scene — one a mother of Jason’s teammate, the other hematoma forms in the tissues, he explained. It swells, making it difficult to apply pressure where the bleeding occurs. Secondly, when there’s a hematoma — an accumulation of blood — in the neck it can compress the trachea, the respiratory tract, which could compromise breathing, he added.
“The speed of the intervention is important,” Larue said.
Jason was taken by ambulance to Hôpital CharlesLeMoyne in Greenfield Park. Cooper alerted his wife, Melanie Desmarchais, who was at the family’s home with their daughter.
The surgery took about 90 minutes. Afterward, they were told it was lucky they had been at the scene because it could have been much worse, Desmarchais said.
Jason’s teammates flocked to the hospital the next day to see him in intensive care, two at a time. He spent four days in the hospital.
“I didn’t like it because I couldn’t eat and drink,” Jason said last week, looking the picture of health.
The scar on his neck looked much less prominent than you might expect so soon after the injury. The traumatic accident was still fresh, naturally, i n their minds. Jason and his parents got emotional when Cooper recounted how his son had asked Larue on the ice if he was going to die.
They were told Jason won’t have any after-effects from the injury. His right eyelid droops slightly, the result of nerve damage from the cut to his neck. But it won’t affect his vision, his father said.
It’s unclear how Jason was injured since he was wearing a neck guard, which is mandatory in minor hockey in Quebec. Maybe it was too loose, Cooper said. The one Jason wears is integrated into his hockey equipment.
Kids hate putting on neck guards, Larue said. But it’s important that they’re well positioned and cover the entire neck surface because players are vulnerable in that area, he said.
A lot of kids wear them loosely or they use the neck guards they’ve been using since they were 8 or 9 years old because they’re comfortable, Brousseau said. He doesn’t think that was the case with Jason because he had a proper one on and suggested it might have been just bad luck.
In the wake of the accident, La Ligue élite du Richelieu posted a notice on its website about neck guards. It also stated that the doctor’s action with help from Cooper probably saved the boy’s life.
“All our parents went out and bought new ones,” Brousseau said before Christmas.
“Kids are still thinking about it.”
Jason plans to rejoin his team for their game on Saturday and said he feels good about doing so.
How has it been not being able to play hockey?
“Well, I’m bored,” he said on Tuesday with a little laugh.
Jason also plays on his school’s hockey team at Heritage Regional High School, where he is in Grade 8.
Desmarchais is fine with her son playing again as long as he’s protected.
“I don’t think it’s something that I could stop him from doing. It’s his passion,” she said.
Cooper has been playing hockey for 40 years and said he’s never seen that injury happen.
It’s something that rarely happens and with neck guards today, “it was just like a freak accident,” he said. They planned to buy Jason a new neck guard this week to replace the one that was cut off after he was injured.
The hockey associations from the t wo teams sent thank you notes to Larue. In an interview, Larue lauded the cohesiveness of the firstaid team at the arena.
“The first aid was excellent there,” he said.
Cooper and Desmarchais sent an email to Larue, thanking him. They feel “much gratitude” toward him, Desmarchais said.
The doctor and Jason’s coach also praised Cooper’s response.
“His father really had a very good reaction, very calm,” Larue said.
The training Cooper has received as a policeman took over, Brousseau said.
“It’s nothing less than heroic what Kevin did,” he said. “It’s his own son. But I don’t know, the reflex to just go on the ice and jump. He actually was on the ice before one of our coaches.”