Kansas Teen Lucky to be Alive After a 10-Inch Blade Plunges into His Face: 'It's Almost a Miracle'
A team of doctors have been left shocked after a Kansas teenager miraculously survived a 10-inch knife blade to the face.
Eli Gregg, 15, was playing outside of his family home, about 90 miles outside of Kansas City on Thursday when the terrifying incident took place, the Associated Press reported.
It is not immediately clear as to how the blade ended up in the teen’s face.
In a video released by the University of Kansas Health System, the boy’s mother, Jimmy Russell, said that she heard her son screaming before she found him with the knife in his face. She then called 911.
“It looked pretty grim, it was scary,” Russell said, adding that at first she didn’t realize the extent of his injury.
“At first I thought it was, you know, just normal, and then he came to the door, and when he opened the door it was blood and he had a piece of metal in his face,” she said in the video.
Gregg faced the possibility of stroke or loss of sight in one eye, doctors told his mother.
“It all depended on how they were able to get it out,” Russell said.
X-Rays showed the knife penetrating Gregg’s face and going into his skull to the underside of his brain, “with important concern for injury to the carotid artery. The major artery supplying the brain [with blood],” said Dr. Koji Ebersole, a member of the teen’s treatment team, in the video.
Gregg’s team of doctors say that the teenager is lucky to be alive, let alone talking.
“It could not have had a pound more force on it and him survive that event,” said Dr. Koji Ebersole. “I don’t think he would have survived it.”
In the video, Ebersole showed scans of Gregg’s brain, pointing out that the sharp tip of the knife was on a vessel that would cause life-threatening bleeding if cut.
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“He was a trooper,” said another member of Gregg’s team, Dr. Jeremy Peterson, in the video. “He did well.”
“I think he’s doing great,” Ebersole added. “He had some bleeding from the level of the skin but the blood vessel looks like it’s perfectly intact. The brain is functioning perfectly, he had the breathing tube removed, he’s wide awake, talking to us. I think he’s going to heal just fine.”
“It’s almost a miracle,” Russell said. “Really, it’s amazing.”
“He says he’s going to stay away from sharp objects,” she added.
