Joe Yates
A school boy has miraculously survived an arrow to the head, which pierced through his brain and was just two centimetres away from exiting his skull.
Back in March of this year, nine-year-old Gus Deterding was helping load his dad's truck - one of those items being a hunting bow - when he slipped on his icy Minnesota driveway. His face was subsequently impaled by an arrow that he was carrying.
The shaft was inches-deep into the youngster's brain, yet he managed to pull it out of his skull himself before running to seek help from his parents, Dave and Abby Deterding, who were inside at the time it happened.
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"I was vacuuming downstairs, and Dave was getting dressed, and [Gus] came in, in a panic," recalled Abby, who spoke with KARE 11.
Their accounts differ over the extent of the wound, with Abby concerned that Gus had 'a lot of blood' on his face, while Dave saw it as a 'very small cut on his head'.
However, the pair, along with medical professionals, were all completely unaware of the severity of the accident despite Gus believing he was going to die.
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"He kept saying, 'Mom, am I dying? Am I going to leave you? I don't want to leave you yet'," Abby told the local TV station. "And I'm like, 'Gus, no, we're just getting stitches'."
When they reached their local hospital in Alexandria, which is roughly a two-hour drive northwest of Minneapolis - where he was then sent by a cautious doctor to its larger Children's Minnesota Hospital.
He was subsequently discharged, with doctors believing it was just a superficial wound, as Gus was acting his normal self.
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It wasn't until he started vomiting at home that he was taken back to hospital, where he underwent a scan which revealed the true extent of his injury.
Explaining why the elementary schoolboy was sent home, Dr Ken Maslonka explained: "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."
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Upon realizing that Gus had removed an arrow that was driven deep into his brain and skull by himself, his mom was taken aback.
"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.
Incredibly, four months on and Gus is reportedly back to how he was prior to the incident, with no sign of any permanent injury.
"He is as normal as he was beforehand," the doctor added.