News
January 11, 2018
An "incredibly brave little girl" who impaled her leg on a 5cm-wide branch is back home and on the mend.
Nine-year-old Yasmin Dunn had been running down a track on Rakino Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf when she tripped and landed on a jagged branch of a tree stump on Wednesday afternoon.
Mum Linda Dunn heard her daughter screaming just as she set down her towel on the nearby beach.
The family of five had just arrived at the bay when Yasmin and her sister "tore up" a bush track toward a rope swing and playhouse.
They didn't get far before Yasmin slipped, falling onto a freshly cut, 5cm-wide branch which went through her calf muscle.
"It was a really weird scream... I knew something was bad," Dunn said.
Her son Joseph, 12, ran to his sister and starting yelling out for help.
Dunn found Yasmin on her hands and one knee - the other leg suspended in the air, impaled on the branch. She was crying out in pain as she tried to move.
Her brain "started racing" and she quickly put her foot underneath Yasmin's leg to fill the space between her daughter and the ground.
"It was pretty gruesome."
It was the family's first time staying on Rakino Island, where they'd been since Monday, but the "really close-knit, lovely" community rallied around them instantly, Dunn said.
"People were racing around, making calls - there were people with us the rest of the time until we lifted off the ground."
An Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter crew arrived around 2.20pm and got to work cutting the branch from the stump.
The branch was left in Yasmin's leg to prevent bleeding, AWRHT spokesman Lincoln Davies said.
The family were flown to Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland where Yasmin was X-rayed and taken into surgery.
Doctors removed the "cobweb-ridden, horrible looking" branch from her leg and thoroughly cleaned the wound before stitching her up, Dunn said.
They were told the branch had missed the nerves, muscle and bone and had gone into the leg almost horizontally, piercing the fatty tissue.
"It could have been a really different story, we are counting our lucky stars," she said.
Back home on Thursday afternoon, Yasmin was "quiet" but they were happily watching a Harry Potter marathon together, Dunn said.
As Yasmin is a keen ballet and tap dancer, mum said it was fortunate that there was no permanent or long-lasting damage.
"It's a pretty awful thing that's happened, but my overwhelming feeling is just of gratitude," she said.
"Despite all the drama and gruesomeness it looks like she might come right pretty quickly."
Dunn praised the "amazing people" at AWRHT who came to their aid, taking the pressure off Dunn, husband David, son Joseph and daughter Katherine, 7.
"I'll be singing their praises forever and forever," she said.
