Student injured in school track event
STELLARTON – An elementary school student was released from the Aberdeen Hospital Friday after sustaining a head injury Tuesday during the district elementary school track and field event.
Connor MacBeth, 12, of Stellarton was admitted Tuesday after tests showed he had blood on the brain. It is expected to take six months to a year to heal according to his father Arron.
The G. R. Saunders Elementary School student was kept in the hospital to be monitored for a few days. He was also told that because his skull isn’t fully developed there could be some side effects. In the coming weeks they will be visiting doctors to monitor his progress.
After returning home his father said he is feeling better, but his spirits are low.
“He’s upset that he can’t play his sports anymore because that’s what he lives for,” said MacBeth. “He wakes up and he breathes sports and talks sports.”
The injury happened while Connor was competing in the high jump. He cleared the bar, but missed the mat and hit his head on the track. His father was watching from his car on the other side of the fence.
After not seeing him get up right away he ran over to see how he was doing.
“He landed on the track, which is pretty much concrete, on his head, neck and his shoulder and got scraped right to the bone on his shoulder,” said MacBeth. “I looked and he wasn’t moving at all. Then he got right up and started to scream at the top of his lungs and fell right back.”
When he got to Connor the individuals in charge of the high jump had him sitting up. MacBeth got them to lay him back down in case of a neck injury.
“I’m no first aid, but I know when you have a kid with a head injury you don’t move them and they had him sitting up,” said MacBeth. “Then there was no ambulance right there, doctors or nurses. A lady came over and asked if he needed a doctor and I said ‘yes right away.’”
After five to 10 minutes they found a doctor there watching his kids competing. The doctor got Connor to the gate while MacBeth brought his car around to take him to the hospital.
“I shouldn’t have (had to),” he said. “There should have been an ambulance there to take care of him right away in case he had a neck injury. Besides the blood on the brain he could have had a broken neck.”
For the next while MacBeth says someone will keep a close eye on him until he begins to feel better and not dizzy.
“They said he’d have a headache for the next 16 or 17 days,” he said. “Hopefully everything will heal in his brain and he’ll be good. Like I told him, a year of missing sports is better than a lifetime of missing sports.”
Neither the school nor the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board would comment on the incident, saying it would be a breach of confidentiality and their policy is not to publicly discuss issues that have happened within school hours.
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