Darnal Mundy was just 3 years old when he came across a gun in his home.
On August 4th, 2015, he found the gun in his dad’s dresser and shot himself in the face. His mother remembers hearing the gunshot come from inside her room, and knowing instantly that it was her son.
“What I heard was a bang and I didn’t feel him under me,” said mom Dorphise Jean to CNN. “So I automatically knew it was him.”
The fater applied pressure to the back of his son’s head, not knowing where the bullet went through. Together, the parents drove Darnal to the hospital.
Dr. Sarah Jernigan, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the University of Miami, handled the case. The left side of Darnal’s skull was removed to allow for swelling, and to protect the part of the brain that wasn’t hit by the bullet. But doctors believed there was little hope.
“When I walked out of surgery and talked to his mom, I was able to tell his mom and dad that he was alive, but I wasn’t sure what kind of recovery he would make,” Jernigan told CNN.
Darnal spent three weeks in a coma. He woke up barely responsive.
But now, he’s doing better than anyone expected.
When he got to the rehabilitation hospital, Darnal couldn’t do very much. “He was not able to talk, he was not walking. He wasn’t even able to sit up by himself. He was basically being fed by a tube and he had a tracheotomy in place,” said Dr. Seema Khurana, director of pediatric rehabilitation at Jackson Rehabilitation Hospital.
But now, after three hours of therapy per day, he breathes on his own, walks, and talks, despote weakness on the right side of his body. He doesn’t need the feeding tube anymore, either.
Khurana is impressed. “It is very unusual, but like we all say, that’s why we love working with little kids, because the amount of recovery that they have—nobody else has that type of recovery.”
Darnal is now at home, and the gun is locked in a safe, out of reach of the child. Khurana believes he will only continue to improve. “He’s going to continue to make progress and…he’s going to be something very important in life because he’s here with us today.”
