Mum shares horrific ordeal after toddler impaled by pencil
Thomas Skrzypinski was just 14-months-old when he fell and impaled himself on a pencil, which penetrated his face and missed his optic nerve by mere millimetres.
The toddler had wandered off with a pencil in his mouth while celebrating an early Christmas with his extended family on November 26, 2016, in Jacobs Well, a coastal suburb on the Gold Coast.
The boy’s mum, Bri, then heard screams and found her son distressed and covered in blood with the pencil penetrating the roof of his mouth.
She made an urgent call to Queensland Ambulance Service just before 4pm, and a medical crew arrived shortly after and rushed him to hospital.
“Usually the sound of sirens worry me. Not this time,” Ms Skrzypinski said.
“It was like hearing the bell of an ice-cream truck as a child. The overwhelming joy I felt when I knew help was coming.”
Thomas endured two hours of surgery and the pencil that fractured his eye socket and narrowly missed the optic nerve was removed.
Had the nerve been damaged, Thomas may have lost part or all of his vision.
He stayed in hospital for five days following the operation before being discharged and beginning his road to full recovery.
The mother, her husband Rob and Thomas have now thanked the paramedics who assisted their young son during the horrifying ordeal.
Ms Skrzypinski said Thomas, now three-years-old, was doing “really well” since the accident.
“He needs to wear glasses but that is a great outcome considering,” she told Yahoo News Australia.
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