CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A 17-month-old boy, who was impaled in the skull by a metal rod, has been released from the hospital less than two weeks after the object was lodged 2 inches into his brain.
Little Jessiah Jackson, dubbed as a “miracle boy,” was playing outside his family’s home in Leland on July 17 when he fell off a chair and onto an L-shaped rod attached to a pressure washer, News 14 Carolina reported.
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"I look away for a split second, and he was standing up in that chair, and the chair was going back. I couldn't do anything," said Carlton Jones, Jessiah's uncle.
Jessiah was rushed to the hospital where neurosurgeons at UNC Children’s Hospital spent two hours removing the piece of metal that had embedded into the toddler’s brain at an angle. In order to get it out, doctors also had to remove an additional piece of Jessiah’s skull about the size of a silver dollar.
The rod had punctured a part of the brain called the left occipital lobe, responsible for vision on the right side. So far, examinations by ophthalmologists have been unable to find any evidence of damage to Jessiah's eyesight.
And that’s just part of the good news: Doctors said they expect Jessiah to make a full recovery with no long-term damage.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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