Boy impaled with meat skewer survives
A10-year-old American boy was making a remarkable recovery on Wednesday after a meat skewer impaled his skull but missed his brain, in what medics called a “one in a million” accident.
Had Xavier Cunningham landed fractions of an inch to either side after falling from a treehouse ladder onto the sharp metal spit fixed upright beneath, he may have been severely injured or killed.
Instead, he is getting back on his feet in the Midwestern state of Kansas following surgery on Sunday to remove the foot-long skewer embedded from his cheekbone to the back of his neck.
“This thing had spared the eye, spared the brain, spared the spinal cord,” neurosurgeon Koji Ebersole, head of the local university health authority, told the Kansas City Star.
“It was one in a million for it to pass five or six inches (13-15 centimetres) through the front of the face to the back and not have hit these things,” he added.
Ebersole said the skewer plunged through a tiny space in his head surrounded by major blood vessels.