Shark attack boy 'moved arm and opened eyes'
Eight-year-old shark-attack victim Jessie Arbogast moved his surgically reattached arm and opened his eyes but remained in a coma-like state yesterday, a doctor said.
Dr Juliet De Campos, an orthopaedic surgeon who helped reattach the arm, said: "Technically he’s unconscious because he’s not conversing like you and I are conversing, but he is showing very promising signs of starting to arouse somewhat.
"I moved his right arm, the one that was replanted. It was next to his body and I moved it away from his body to let his armpit breathe a little bit, and he immediately moved it back down."
Jessie, threatened with brain damage after losing most of his blood during the attack, lay in critical but stable condition at Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital.
De Campos said another doctor who examined Jessie reported that Jessie responded when the physician rubbed the boy’s chest and called out his name.
"Jessie opened his eyes and Jessie looked at him, and he also moved his right foot and his left arm," De Campos said.
A 2.1m (7ft) bull shark attacked the boy while he was wading in knee-deep water on a Florida Panhandle beach on Friday. The boy’s uncle and another beachgoer wrestled the shark to shore, where a ranger shot it and pried its jaw open while a firefighter pulled the arm out of its gullet.
The boy also suffered a severe leg wound. The loss of nearly all his blood harmed virtually every organ in his body.
Doctors had not used the term coma until Tuesday, when tests showed brain activity akin to deep sleep or a light coma.
