Boy recovering after impaling himself with stick

HEBRON, Ky. - Nathan Brixey spent Wednesday evening kicking around a soccer ball with his brothers and sister, just three days after being seriously injured playing with a stick.

His family went to a campground near Corbin, Ky. for the Labor Day weekend. Nathan was climbing a jungle gym while holding a stick. He somehow fell, impaling himself through his mouth, into his soft palate and into his nasal passage.

"We're in the woods of course, and everywhere we go they pick up sticks and we probably told them 500 times that day to quit playing with the sticks," said Nathan's mother Carrie Dotson.

Carrie and her husband were packing their camper when they heard a squealing noise and then saw what happened to Nathan.

"I was up on the monkey bars and climbing and then when I slipped the stick went in my mouth then it put a big hole in it," explained Nathan Brixey.

A medical helicopter flew Nathan to the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington where he underwent emergency surgery. Doctors called it a one-in-a-million injury.

"It didn't go down his throat, it didn't come out the back or hit anything and it missed the two nerves that you need to speak," said Carrie Dotson.

Nathan can't eat any solid food for three weeks while he recovers. The family has to return to Lexington for a follow up visit with doctors who will determine if Nathan needs any more surgeries.