The paramedics came into the unit with the patient. It was a ten year old boy. We were to clean him up and get him ready for surgery. His condition was critical. Another nurse and I were trying to clean him up as fast as possible before surgery called to say that they were on their way to get him. The child lived on a farm, his dirty body was due to rain the day before causing a lot of mud on the farm. He had taken his 22 rifle out to go hunting with one of his younger brothers. He was climbing through a barbed wire fence and his gun got caught on the barbed wire and it went off shooting him in the upper chest and barely missing his heart. The bullet went through one lung, collapsing it. The bullet lodged in the upper spine, severing the spinal column just below the base of the neck and the area above his shoulder blades.

Surgery came and took him for a long surgery for his lung and for the spinal column. About 3 hrs later the surgeron came bursting into the unit. Mad as H___. He wanted to know who sent the boy to surgery with dirty feet. We told him we bathed him as best as we could. He had dried mud all over esp his feet. He then apologized for his anger. He said that the boy would be paralized from his neck down, due to the trauma caused by the bullet, for the rest of his life. He then sat down and cried. He said there was no excuse for this accident, the parents thought that the boy knew how to handle a gun. He said "Oh, I just don't know where to place the blame."

This is the doctor I told you about in an earlier story. The one who sat at the bedside of the little boy who died from head injuries from a moped wreck.

It makes one stop and think. Guns are not for children and certainly not for some adults. This child should have known better than to climb over a fence with the gun in hand. Did his dad not teach him that??? There will always be questions that will go unanswered. God only knows where or to whom to place the blame. I know God has forgiven those who never thought of the dangers of a loaded gun.