When 3-year-old Darnal Mundy II grabbed a gun in his home
and accidentally shot himself in the head, his parents thought he wouldn't
survive. However, after weeks of intensive therapy, Darnal is now talking,
walking and slowly regaining control of the right side of his body.
The small wheelchair that holds his body and the scars on
his head and face are constant reminders of the morning he nearly lost his
life.
"One nurse said she's worked at the hospital for
18 years and has hardly seen children ever survive a gunshot wound to the
head," said Dorphise Jean, Darnal's mother.
Jean still vividly remembers the horror of August 4, 2015.
She was startled out of sleep by the sound of a gunshot inside her bedroom.
She narrated:
"What I heard was a bang and I didn't feel him under
me,". "So I already automatically know it was him."
Somehow Darnal had gotten out of his parents' bed, climbed a
chair in front of his dad's dresser, opened the top drawer, grabbed a gun and
shot himself in the face.
"I just saw him laying on the ground, and then his dad
jumped out of bed, and I just kept saying, 'My baby, my baby'," recalled
Jean. Darnal's father placed his hand on the back of his son's head, applying
pressure. "I didn't know where the bullet went through," said Jean.
She grabbed her cell phone and keys and drove as fast as she could to Holtz
Children's Hospital while Darnal's father held the boy.
"My son was crying. Throughout the whole experience he
was crying," said Jean. "I just kept talking to him while
driving."
Dr. Sarah Jernigan, a University of Miami pediatric
neurosurgeon at Holtz who operated on Darnal said:
"He had a gunshot wound to the center of his head and
the bullet had exited in the back left side,". "His CAT scan showed a
large blood clot and swelling in the brain."
Doctors surgically removed the left side of Darnal's skull
to allow for swelling and to protect the part of the brain that was untouched
by the bullet.
"When I walked out of surgery and talked to his mom, I
was able to tell his mom and dad that he was alive, but I wasn't sure what kind
of recovery he would make," said Jernigan.
Jean said the doctors warned her things would get worse
before they got better. And they did. Darnal spent three weeks in a coma, and
when he woke up, he was barely responsive.
"He was not able to talk, he was not walking. He wasn't
even able to sit up by himself," said Dr. Seema Khurana, director of
pediatric rehabilitation at Jackson Rehabilitation Hospital where Darnal was
transferred three weeks after the shooting. "He was basically being fed by
a tube and he had a (tracheotomy) in place."
At the rehabilitation hospital, Darnal received at
least three hours of therapy every day and learned how to breathe on his own
again and slowly started talking and walking, despite having weakness on the
right side of his body. His feeding tube has also been removed. His progress
seems like a miracle.
"It is very unusual, but like we all say, that's why we
love working with little kids, because the amount of recovery that they have --
nobody else has that type of recovery," said Khurana.
This week, after more than three months after the shooting,
Darnal is going home. Jean said they still keep a gun in the house for personal
protection, but they're making sure it is locked up in a safe, out of Darnal's
reach.
Darnal will be celebrating his 4th birthday on Saturday and
the doctors who are helping Darnal heal have high hopes for his future.
"He's going to continue to make progress and ... he's
going to be something very important in life because he's here with us
today," said Khurana.
Source: CNN
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