Boy Remains In Coma 2 Months After Forklift Accident
GREENFIELD, N.H. — A 12-year-old Claremont boy who has been in a coma since he was run over by a forklift has been transferred to a brain injury center.
Tracey Hagerman hopes doctors and therapists at Crotched Mountain rehabilitation center in Greenfield can coax her son Jason back into consciousness.
Jason went to work with her boyfriend in Claremont on April 3 in what was intended to be an educational experience. While riding in the cab of the forklift, Jason hopped out, ran to the front and apparently tried to jump onto the two forks. He fell underneath and suffered a crushing injury to his brain stem, the brain’s command center.
He was transferred early last month to Crotched Mountain, where his mother hopes to visit him twice a week.
“Everybody keeps saying, ‘You’re so strong, how do you do it?’” said Tracey Hagerman, 32. “I keep saying, ‘How do you not do it?’”
“I cry, I break down,” she added. “But you don’t have a choice.”
The accident happened while Jason was on suspension from Claremont Middle School for fighting. His mother didn’t want to leave him home alone so he tagged along with her boyfriend, Mike Hurd, to Maurice Auto & Truck in Claremont.
“This was supposed to be, the (opportunity) for him to see how certain things work,” Hurd said. “He was learning something he had an interest in.”
Crotched Mountain specializes in treating brain injuries and has a school for people recovering from brain trauma.
Speech therapist Amy Simmons said it is difficult to tell whether Jason is responding to anything she is doing or if his movements are involuntary and unrelated at this point.
Experts said the odds of recovery are long but difficult to predict.
“Prognosis in brain injury is hard; you just don’t know (how long) it will take,” Crotched Mountain spokesman Mike Redmond said. “As doctors say around here, the brain is plastic. It can find another way around to do what it needs to do. We’re generally not in the prognoses business. We’re generally optimistic.”
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Time: June 2, 2008, 1:03 pm
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