After serious accident, teen promotes helmet use
A scar remains after Nick Perez, 14, fell off his long board and required emergency brain surgery to remove a blod clot. He was not wearing his helmet when he fell. In late April, Nick, a 14-year-old eighth-grader, was skating home from a friend's house on his long board (an extra long, extra wide skate board) he used for transportation. He was moving fast, listening to his iPod, and the board went out from under him and Nick's head hit the pavement. At most, Nick would have suffered a pounding headache and a lecture from his parents about being late for dinner. Paramedics came and when they put Nick on the stretcher he could not lay his head down because it hurt too badly, he said. A CAT scan taken at San Antonio Community Hospital revealed a blood clot that was pinching his brain. During the ambulance ride from San Antonio to Children's Hospital of Orange County, the clot had almost doubled in size. "It was 2 a.m. and I had to make this snap decision for my son to have brain surgery," Perez said. "At first I said no, not unless they could guarantee me 100 percent that he wouldn't die." Nick's neurosurgeon couldn't make that promise, but she was certain that Nick was getting worse with every second. Perez and wife Mary agreed to the surgery. They waited anxiously as doctors cut a "U"- shaped flap through their son's scalp, removed a piece of his skull, drained the clot, replaced the skull then joined the scalp flap back together with 39 staples. Nick was lucky. He didn't suffer any of the possible side effects associated with the surgery and was back in school just weeks after surgery. "I didn't think anything like this would ever happen to me," he said. "I've taken falls a lot worse and never really got hurt."
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