Removing Glass~Jem's Surgery

It's been almost 2 years since the March 14, 2005 accident that barely escaped taking the lives of my twin sons and my husband.

During the accident, Jeremiah flew out of his seat, after being hit from behind by a van being driven much too fast, by a young man reading a map and not paying attention. When Jeremiah flew out of his seat, he crashed head-on/face-on through the side window of the passenger van, shattering the glass on his exit.

He flew through the air more than 30 feet until he landed painfully beside the road in the gravel and dirt. Meanwhile, the van he was in, was forced to crash head-on into a tractor trailer, injuring, even further, Jeremiah's twin brother, who ended up with 5 broken ribs and a broken arm when he was pinned underneath the over-turned van.

As well, his Daddy was also injured upon impact of the rear-end collision with severe brain trauma. And the injuries continued when the tractor trailer impact caused his tendon to become ripped from his elbow.
It is horrifying to even imagine what my sons and husband went through during that time. Just terrifying.

It took the emergency room over an hour of irrigating and stitching to clean out and stitch up all the wounds on Jeremiah's face and body. On his face alone, he had over 70 stitches, all without any pain relief! His face looked like hamburger meat, all shredded, bloody and raw. It was a Mother's worst nightmare and worst of all, there was nothing I could do to take the pain and injuries away.

Unfortunately, the hospital was not able to remove all the debris from Jeremiah's face. But Jem was too traumatized to have anyone else touch his face. The plastic surgeon said we could wait until Jeremiah was ready to have the left-over debris removed at a later time.

So, 2 years later Jeremiah told us he was ready to remove, what we all thought was just a tiny piece of gravel from beside his left eye.

We went in on January 16 at 6am. After 10am we were all able to finally go home. And the debris had been removed and placed in a medical container for us to keep.

It was not gravel. No. It was a sharp, evil-looking piece of glass. A piece of glass that resembles obsidian, or volcanic glass: What some call an 'Apache Tear'.

A piece of glass from the back side passenger window. The window that Jeremiah crashed through.

Jeremiah, with Jackson (not so good of a pic of Jax) after the surgery.
A picture of the glass removed from beside Jeremiah's left eye. The quarter is there for size comparison. It was a fairly large piece of glass for a little boy to have imbedded beside his eye for 2 years.