After horrible accident, Mt. Vernon boy making incredible recovery

By: 
Steve Chapman

Noah Douglas, 6, gives the thumbs up on his way
home from the hospital. (Photo submitted)

6-year-old amputee blowing away expectations as healing and rehab begin for resilient youngster
 
On May 30, Noah Douglas, 6, suffered a horrible accident where his foot was caught under a riding lawnmower and was ultimately amputated. However, instead of sitting around and moping, Noah is making a recovery that is astounding everyone around him, his mother, Bethany Cook Douglas said. Within three weeks of being fitted with a prosthetic foot, he is walking and even running.
“He is defying even the therapist and the prosthetic people and the doctors,” she said. “He’s blowing even their expectations out of the water. They’ve just been blown away by how quickly he’s recovered. He’s even running. He actually ran for the first time (on Thursday, Aug. 13). I don’t think he even realized he was doing it. He just started running. He in particular has exceeded even normal expectations for kids as far as how quickly he has gotten on his feet and back to normal.”
Noah is also engaging in everyday activities that are normal for boys his age, Douglas said.
“He’s going out and playing,” she said. “He wears his prosthetic all waking hours. We went to the zoo the other day and walked around for hours at the zoo. He’s not using a walker, not using a cane. A lot of people, I think, don’t even realize he has a fake leg at this point and time, honestly. He’s been on the trampoline, jumping up and down, he’s done Slip-n- Slides, he’s been into the pool. He did a race with his little brother the other day with some babysitters, and he just ran. He just ran across the whole width of the park.”
While he is having a good time, Douglas said being able to play is also helping him to adjust to his prosthetic foot.
“Play has been incredible for him, because play has become his physical therapy,” she said. “He does a lot of light-saber fights with my older son, his brother who’s eight. You don’t think about it, but there’s so much balance involved with being your center of gravity and moving around; just the coordination and everything.
 He doesn’t realize he’s doing all these things, and yet his body is kind of relearning how to adjust to everything.”
Douglas said she believes there are three reasons as to why Noah has been able to make such a quick recovery. One is his faith, and the support he is receiving from members of their faith community.
“We are very deeply devoted to our church and Christ, and we have an incredible support system around us,” she said. “The community of Mt. Vernon, the schools, the churches. I mean, they have come around us so tremendously in ways I can never even know about, I’m sure, and in ways we would never be able to repay. I think he has had so much prayer around him, so much support; I think that has done a lot of it. I think our faith and just realizing that he believes in Jesus, and he knows that everything happens for a reason, and no matter what, God’s got him.”
Second, Douglas said, is that Noah is very strong for a boy his age, both physically and mentally. She described him as a “Baby Sampson.”
“He’s an extremely strong kid, I think, both physically and mentally,” she said, “and his personality is just one of, he doesn’t feel sorry for himself very often and he just kind of pushes forward. He takes what life throws at him and keeps walking the path that he’s on.”
Finally, this isn’t Noah’s first experience with amputation. He has a foster sister who also had limb amputated in October due to an infection.
“Because of that, he is kind of used to some of the equipment and the therapist and the doctor’s appointments, like he’s seen that with his older sister,” she said. “None of that was necessarily new or scary for him, so I think we kind of had a little bit of a head start with him psychologically and emotionally, sort of already having gone through this … through his sister’s experience.”
Douglas said her family has received a lot of support from the Mt. Vernon community and the area churches. Some examples include a donation-only garage sale fundraiser, a woman baking and selling homemade banana bread to raise funds for the family, and several donations of money and food. She said people have also run errands and babysat the other children in the family so she and her husband could focus on Noah’s needs.
“The community has been just absolutely incredible, and our church family,” she said. “We just couldn’t ask to live in a better place.”

Category:

Lawrence County Record

312 S. Hickory St.
Mt. Vernon, MO, 65712
www.lawrencecountyrecord.com

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