‘Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a miracle’
Teen who lost half his skull in accident works way back to recovery
SYDNEY, N.S.— Just two years ago, James MacNevin was a typical 16year-old — skateboard in one hand and an attitude in the other.
That all changed on a slippery patch of Highway 125, when a series of events would leave him living with only half a skull.
James was a passenger on Jan. 6, 2011, with two other teens in a car that spun out of control about 6:30 p.m. and collided with an oncoming truck.
While the others in the car suffered only slight injuries, James was raced to hospital with a broken arm, punctured lung and serious head injury to begin a series of procedures that would save his life.
“Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a miracle,” he said during an interview at his home with a sly smile on his face.
His mother, Cheryl, who rolled her eyes at that comment, said her son’s positive attitude has been an inspiration to their family.
“My sister-in-law said if you are ever feeling sorry for yourself, go spend time with James,” said Cheryl. “He changes your perspective. He’s not showing off. It is just his attitude about the whole thing.”
The night of the accident, local medical teams worked for hours to stabilize the teen, before diagnosing him with brain swelling and airlifting him to Halifax for more specialized treatment, including removal of his cranial bone flap.
An eight-hour surgery was followed by a medically induced coma that lasted weeks to help him heal from four separate injuries to his brain.
Surgeries that followed would see the flap that covers half of his skull added and removed due to infection. Eventually it was decided a synthetic one was the best option, but that became infected, too.
Now with the entire left side of his skull gone, MacNevin waits patiently for the sixth and, he hopes, final procedure.
“They said when I get the bone flap in, it is just like a regular head,” says MacNevin. “So I’m pretty pumped about that. But everyone is different.”
He’s looking forward to skateboarding again and twice daily workouts that kept him at a fit 150 pounds and not the 113 he dipped to after the crash. “The day of the accident we had gotten up at about 5 a.m. and we both went to the gym,” said Cheryl. “Then we’d come home, he’d get ready for school and me work. He’d go back to the gym that night.” MacNevin skipped the nightly workout the day of his accident, which he doesn’t remember. His age is one reason he’s expected to recover fully. “Because he was 16 when it happened, the neurosurgeon explained his brain was still growing,” said Cheryl. “His brain learned to adapt and reroute itself. His frontal lobe damaged his rational thinking, his impulse control — all that rerouted.” For now, having no bone flap means balance is a problem. MacNevin wore a helmet for a time, but he now comfortably makes his way without it. There was also some difficulty speaking after he was brought out of his coma. “It was like a cabinet that fell over,” he said. “I lost all the words that I had.” He now speaks perfectly after he “found” and “refiled” his words. There are still some complications MacNevin must deal with every day, though. “We get nervous as parents because that is just scalp on brain,” Cheryl said. “People come up and hug him. You’ll see James pull back.
“We are very protective over him. I’m sure he is never going to want to hear ‘Watch your head’ again.”
That’s followed closely by no longer being under 24-hour surveillance by his family, and returning to school.
“It’s weird. Some people don’t survive after something like that, but I did. Why? Our ongoing joke is that I’m meant for big things. I’m going to cure cancer or something.”
He laughs, adding, “there’s no way.”
“Sometimes I think I want to be a doctor, a doctor with a (synthetic) bone flap that puts in bone flaps. That would be crazy.”