First responders rushed a boy struck by a wayward arrow to Mayo Clinic's campus in Rochester, Minnesota, where a pediatric trauma surgeon discovered that the arrow had caused spinal cord damage. The boy's parents prepared him for a different life from the one he had before: in a wheelchair, paralyzed and unable to walk. The boy was determined to walk again and, with rehabilitation, achieved this goal.
A mother's worst fear. I received a phone call from my 15 year old son, frantic, couldn't quite understand him. Told me to hurry up and get home. There'd been an accident. An accident that would change Kirsten Bressler is life exactly what happened? I shot I was feeding my ball and I ripped straight off the target and hit my little brother. Is he awake? Yeah. Is he breathing? Yes. An eight year old boy shot with an arrow. A call emergency medical dispatcher, Denise borg, shots calls unusual and unforgettable. Once I found out what part of the body it was that he was hit. I automatically auto launched a helicopter Jessica fight was a flight paramedic on that helicopter for the rest of my career. I will never forget the sinking feeling I had in my stomach when we opened those ambulance doors and here you see this little guy with an arrow sticking straight out of his chest. That little guy was Curtis Bressler. I just kept telling him I loved him and that he was in very good care. It didn't even occur to us that this could be a spinal injury until somebody had said he's not moving from the waist down and we verified that Mayo Clinic's dr Denise clinton figured out why when Curtis arrived in the emergency department at Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. He had missed a lot of very important structures here but clearly had injured his spine. Dr clinton had to figure out how to remove it without causing any more damage. It's okay. I'm like, he's with us because they told us that it had missed his pulmonary artery, his aorta in his heart which he would have bled out on the spot and my husband and I wouldn't have, I've been able to say goodbye to him by the time we got there. So I was very thankful and sad at the same time, Curtis's mom waited for the right moment to tell him his fate that he was now a paraplegic. I said you will be able to do everything everybody else does. You will just do it differently. I'm like you will be able to play basketball. You will, you know um be able to do everything anybody else does. But the eight year old boy with a severed spine didn't believe the doctors that he'd never walk again. Not true. I felt as each tube came out of him, he got stronger. He started rehab sensations and feelings started coming back. He was getting used to his wheelchair but he wasn't satisfied. Then one day he shocked his family and doctors. All of a sudden he walked in to the room. Sometimes we don't have explanations from a medical standpoint but with this kind of outcome, I'm okay not having an explanation, Curtis's progress continues to defy odds and explanation. He is now doing heel, heel and toe walking, tippy toe walking and he'll walking and he jumped yesterday and that that brought tears to my eyes roughly. Two months later, he's playing basketball. Exactly like everybody else. It's truly a miracle, a miracle that inspires tears of joy from those who helped save Curtis was amazing. I almost wanted to cry when I saw him walking in this job. You have to believe there's miracles out there. I think he is beyond lucky. I'm so grateful for him that, that it turned out the way it did. We knew he was something else, Something bigger was happening. And he has truly amazed us. He continues to amaze us and an eight year old boy who refused to believe he wouldn't walk. Now looks forward to getting back to soccer and writing his family's john Deere tractor. He believes that one day all of this will be nothing more than just a memory.
