A 9-year-old who spent nearly a year in the hospital after getting hit by an SUV, is walking again thanks to local doctors in Jacksonville.
Action News Jax Courtney Cole learned how a new procedure called ExFix changes lives.
Imagine wondering if your child will ever be able to walk again, on their own.
That was Christian Lee’s worry after her 10-year-old son, Cuyler Chancey was hit by an SUV. He was 9 years old when the incident happened.
“I was riding my bike, or my friend’s dirt bike, and I was riding through a trail with my papa, and then I came out the trail, and I got hit by a car,” Chancey said.
“When it first happened, I couldn’t even go to the ICU room door,” Christian Lee said.
Chancey stayed in the hospital for about nine months, enduring multiple surgeries, but he still was not able to put weight on his left leg, or walk.
After he was transferred to Nemours Children’s Specialty Care in Jacksonville, that all changed thanks to a procedure known as an ExFix, or an External Fixation.
“We had to treat a couple of different things. So, when we looked at his initial X-ray, what we had seen was that he had two problems,” said James Terrill. He is the Physician Assistant who manages all of the ExFix procedures at the center.
Terrill explained Chancey had a deformity in his leg, as well as a fracture.
“When we look at him you can see he has a deformity where his leg is going out(ward), because he has a fracture at the top of his tibia that healed with a little bit of an angle. Then he has a fracture down below, when we look here, that hadn’t healed. There’s an area where there’s no bone, unfortunately,” Terrill said.
The Nemours medical team used a device called a halo to straighten the leg and repair the break.
“You can see up above where we have three rings, and so we cut out the area that hadn’t healed to get back to good healthy bone. Then we put these distraction devices and used them for compression to bring the bones together,” Terrill said.
Chancey donated his halo frame to Nemours to be used for education. This way other kids will be able to see how it works before they have the procedure themselves.
Nemours is the only children’s facility in Jacksonville that offers this procedure.
“We are very excited. I cannot wait for him to start walking again (without a cast). It’s been so long!” Christian Lee said.
Click here to learn more about Nemours Children's Specialty Care in Jacksonville.
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