Utah boy recovering from brain injury caused by falling on pencil

MORGAN, UTAH (KSL) — A 7-year-old boy from Morgan has returned home to recover following a traumatic injury. Isaac Evans fell on a pencil that punctured just above his eye and went into his brain.

Caid and Alicia Evans, Isaac’s parents, sat down with KSL-TV to talk about the incident that happened on the night of May 5.

“Alicia woke up and heard kind of a thump upstairs,” said Caid Evans. “Isaac was crying.”

Isaac had fallen out of bed during the night.

“He kind of didn’t quit crying and his crying was a little bit different than normal,” remembered his father.

At first, his parents didn’t know what was wrong, but then they noticed a large bump over his eye and it was bleeding.

“I asked Alicia to go see what he hit his head on and she came downstairs and she was holding a pencil that had broken and had blood on it,” he said. “I think it was just laying on the ground and my guess is that when he fell, his hand hit the edge of it just enough to tip it up.”

Caid rushed his son from their home in Morgan to Primary Children’s Hospital.

Doctors gave them bad news: The pencil had gone into Isaac’s brain.

“The CT scan showed that it had entered into his brain and that there was pieces of pencil in his brain,” Alicia Evans said.

Isaac spent nine days in the ICU and the next nine in the neuro-trauma unit. He had to have two brain surgeries, one to remove graphite and wood from where the pencil broke off, and another to place a stent in one of his cerebral arteries.

Isaac had to practice walking and talking again, but his parents said love from family, friends and the community lifted his spirits.

“About 10 days in he started to laugh, and once he started to laugh, I really saw him turn a corner and it was kind of back to Isaac,” Caid said.

Two and a half weeks after the incident, Isaac was able to go home.

The first grader still has some recovering to do but, as his parents said, he’s back to Isaac.

“He’s such an optimistic, happy kid,” she said. “I think that’s part of what helped him push through is his positive attitude.”

Doctors told the Evans if the pencil had gone even a thousandth of an inch to the side, it could have caused a stroke and paralysis.

So even though Isaac’s accident was extremely unlucky, they still feel very fortunate it wasn’t worse.