A young boy has astonishingly survived an arrow in his head, with the projectile piercing his brain and stopping just two centimeters short of breaking through his skull.
In March this year, nine-year-old Gus Deterding was assisting with loading his father’s truck. Among the items was a hunting bow. As he carried it, he slipped on the icy driveway of their Minnesota home, resulting in an arrow impaling his face.
Despite the arrow shaft being lodged inches into his brain, Gus managed to remove it himself and ran inside to alert his parents, Dave and Abby Deterding.
“I was vacuuming downstairs, and Dave was getting dressed, and [Gus] came in, in a panic,” Abby recounted to KARE 11.
Their perceptions of the wound’s severity differed; Abby noticed ‘a lot of blood’ on Gus’s face, while Dave perceived it as a ‘very small cut on his head’.
Neither they nor the medical professionals could initially grasp the true danger of the accident, even as Gus feared for his life.
“He kept saying, ‘Mom, am I dying? Am I going to leave you? I don’t want to leave you yet’,” Abby recounted to the local TV station. “And I’m like, ‘Gus, no, we’re just getting stitches’.”
They first took him to their local hospital in Alexandria, about two hours northwest of Minneapolis. From there, a cautious doctor referred him to the larger Children’s Minnesota Hospital.
He was discharged after doctors assessed him, thinking it was merely a superficial wound since Gus was behaving normally.
However, when he began vomiting at home, they returned to the hospital, where a scan revealed the true seriousness of his injury.
Dr. Ken Maslonka explained why the boy was initially sent home: “He looked too normal. I would say in the 28 years I’ve been at Children’s of Minnesota, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“It came within two centimetres of exiting the skull,” Maslonka added. “The carotid artery is right here [millimetres from where the arrow pierced Gus’ brain], had it hit that, that would have been death within minutes.”
When Abby realized Gus had removed such a deeply embedded arrow from his brain and skull himself, she was shocked.
“And that scan, I was like, it literally took my breath away and I felt like sick to my stomach, like I couldn’t believe it. Like, no, that far… what?” she recalled.
Amazingly, four months after the incident, Gus has returned to his pre-accident state, showing no signs of lasting damage.
“He is as normal as he was beforehand,” the doctor added.