Calm survivor

Arkadelphia middle-schooler lucky to be alive

Zane Hill, a seventh-grader at Goza Middle School in Arkadelphia, shows off part of a branch that impaled him in the neck in a boating accident on June 10. Hill said he kept the stick as a trophy.
Zane Hill, a seventh-grader at Goza Middle School in Arkadelphia, shows off part of a branch that impaled him in the neck in a boating accident on June 10. Hill said he kept the stick as a trophy.

Kurt Hill said his son, Zane, is absolutely the most blessed person there is — second only to himself.

“The whole time, he was worried about me,” Kurt said. “He didn’t want me to feel bad because I was the one driving the boat.

“But I told him, ‘You worry about yourself. The better you get, the better I get.’”

Zane, a seventh-grader at Goza Middle School in Arkadelphia, was impaled by a tree branch on June 10 while riding in front of a boat on the Ouachita River. Zane said he and his family were going maybe 10 or 15 mph when a branch got caught on the railing of the front of the boat, causing a second branch to rise from the water and knock him to the back of the boat.

“The flipped-up stick was the one that caught me and launched me to the back of the boat, where I hit my head,” Zane said. “I had a pretty severe concussion, and at first I said, ‘Ow, my head.’ At first, I didn’t even realize the stick was in my throat. I knew it felt weird.”

Kurt said he could tell that his son had been hit by a stick because he heard the snap of the stick and saw some debris fly.

“As I’m trying to navigate to calmer water, he said his head hurt, but I was glad to hear him talking,” Kurt said. “My assumption was the stick had hit him in the life vest to knock him back and hit that hard.”

Elizabeth Hill, Zane’s mom, moved to the back of the boat and felt a bulge in the back of his neck. Kurt said they were both worried that Zane had broken his neck.

“If he felt he had broken his neck, that was pretty concerning,” Kurt said. “I worried about paralysis, but he was able to move his hands and feet.”

At one point, Elizabeth looked at Kurt and whispered, “It’s bad.”

“I saw wood on him,” she said. “He had his life jacket on him, and I brushed the wood away, but then I realized it was in his neck.”

The stick didn’t break the skin on the back of his neck, but it did go all the way back to the vertebrae. Elizabeth said the stick broke the C2 vertebrae and severed a vertebral artery that runs along the spinal cord. The stick was pressing on the artery, so Zane didn’t bleed out.

“One of the doctors said it was like the parting of the Red Sea because it missed everything vital,” Elizabeth said.

She said Zane now has two rods that go from the C1 to the C4 vertebrae and screws in each of those that are fused to the bone.

“It is pretty crazy. If it had not hit that bone, it probably would have gone all the way through, and that was the only thing that stopped it,” Elizabeth said.

Zane, 12, said there was no cellphone service where his family was, and they were about 80 yards from where their camp was.

“But for some reason, at that time, there was service that wasn’t there before,” he said. “My mom was holding my arms down so I wouldn’t try to pull the stick out.”

Kurt said that between the boat motor and poor cellphone service, he was having to yell a little bit to the operator, who was having a hard time understanding him.

“I was trying to explain the severity of the situation without scaring Zane,” Kurt said. “We had to go 3 miles in a slow boat loaded down with five people and two kayaks and a tent and a canopy.

“We weren’t moving very fast.”

Elizabeth said Zane’s little brothers, Ben, 10, and Tommy, 5, were huddled together, praying.

“My first thought, this was the last time I was going to hold him,” Elizabeth said. “But he kept talking to me, and he was getting frustrated with me because I kept asking him questions.”

Kurt said because of how low the water was, he had trouble getting the boat onto the trailer. He said that at one point, he had to wade out into the water and use the winch to pull in the boat.

“But then I stripped the winch from how hard I was pulling,” Kurt said. “I don’t know how, but I got the boat on the trailer. I think I had some help from some angels because there is no way I could have done that today.

“A boat that heavy just don’t get on a trailer with no help.”

He said as soon as they got up to a gravel road, he met with the first responders and guided them to the field where the helicopter could land.

“This whole process took 30 minutes, maybe longer,” Kurt said. “When I got to the field and saw Zane, he was grinning with this huge stick in his throat.

“That’s when I really knew in my heart that there was a good chance he was going to survive this. It was all going to be up to the surgeons and God.”

Zane said he never got real upset or cried. The whole time, he felt a calming presence beside him.

“I just felt this really calm feeling,” Zane said. “I felt like God was right there with me. I was just really calm. I wasn’t panicking.”

When Zane told his mom that, she said, “Next time, tell him to nudge me and let me know everything is going to be OK.”

Baptist Health MedFlight transported Zane to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, where he spent six days. His aunt, Kristyn Wheaton, who lives in Little Rock, was the first to meet him there.

“By the time we got there, he was already in surgery,” Elizabeth said. “He had the head of every surgical department — between the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Children’s, everybody was there.

“He had all the departments because they had no idea what they were going to find when they got in there.”

Kristy Schreiner, one of the MedFlight nurses, said that what makes this case so unique is that Zane was awake, alert and talking clearly without any distress, and moving all his extremities.

“These types of ‘scene flights’ can be chaotic; however, this one was not,” said Schreiner, who has been flying for five years and has been a nurse for 12.

“The ground EMS unit was calm and collected, stabilizing the patient, which made our job a lot easier,” Schreiner said.

“I just want to express my gratitude for the people all over the world who were praying for Zane,” Kurt said. “There were people I didn’t even know that were praying for him.

“We could feel and see those prayers working. Our continued thanks for everybody who did that.”

Elizabeth teaches at Goza Middle School and has been with the district for 15 years. She gave up her previous position as instructional facilitator at Central Primary School in Arkadelphia so she could spend more time with her kids and “not have to worry about work as much.”

“[Zane’s accident] has put other things in perspective, because really, there is so much to learn from something like this,” Kurt said. “We are so fortunate and blessed, because so many people have had other outcomes.

“Being that close, you get a sense of what they feel. I don’t know how people survive or cope with the loss of a child. After coming that close, it has really changed the way I look at things.”

Zane had played football in fifth and sixth grade and would have joined the seventh-grade program this summer. Arkadelphia High School head coach J.R. Eldridge said Zane was a good athlete and “got after it every day.”

Now Zane won’t be able to participate in football, but he will be allowed to continue to play baseball. He helps the varsity football team by filming their practices and games.

“He does a really good job for us,” Eldridge said. “After he got out of the hospital, he started showing up, going to all the team camps, and he shows up every day to film.

“He is a worker.”

Before Arkadelphia’s season opener against Sylvan Hills High School in Week 0, the MedFlight crew that took Zane to the hospital landed in the middle of Badger Stadium and presented Zane and his family with a football signed by the crew.

“My flight partner, Holly Tollhurst, and I wanted to do something extraordinarily special for Zane and his family,” Schreiner said. “Zane had no idea of the surprise, which made it even better. As a crew, we rarely get to see the patient again, let alone be made aware of their final outcome.

“This was a chance for us to reunite in a unique way and also let his classmates at school and his family know how courageous a trauma survivor he is.”

“I think it meant a lot to him,” Eldridge said. “Once we heard about [the accident], our varsity players prayed for [Zane] every day.

“They knew what was going on with him, and then they got to know him. They saw him and his perseverance throughout the injury.

“I think seeing him show up every day, our varsity players gained a lot of respect for him. They thought it was a great deal.”

Eldridge said that for Zane to be able to do that says something about Zane and his parents.

“Just the fact that he was able to persevere through that, I think that says something about who he is and his willingness to show up and do a job,” Eldridge said.

Zane, who attends First United Methodist Church in Arkadelphia with his family, said he felt special being awarded the game ball.

“I think he was pretty surprised,” Elizabeth said. “He didn’t know it was coming. When the football team got around him and started chanting his name, I think he was pretty excited about that, too.”

Zane and his family have not been back to the river yet, but they did travel to Gulf Shores.

“I’m not scared to get back into the water,” Zane said.

“It wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t a rail on the front of the boat. I’m just scared of rails,” he said.

“I don’t think I will ever fully recover from it,” Kurt said, “because I relive it every day, anytime I close my eyes. I’ll just look at him, and think ‘Please, don’t let this be a dream.’

“I am just thanking God, because I was so scared. It is still so surreal that Zane survived that.”

Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.

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