'Internal Decapitation': One Boy's Amazing Recovery

Dec. 23, 2008— -- Stacy Perez says she can't remember much about the car accident in September.

What the Hillsboro, Texas, woman does recall is how her car slammed into the side of a dump truck at an intersection at which she had the green light. She remembers losing consciousness and then awakening to find the flesh of her arm flayed by the broken glass of her shattered windshield.

But Perez says her most nightmarish memory of the accident was looking into the back seat to see the horrific injury her 9-year-old son had sustained.

"I remember getting out of the car and looking over at him and seeing his how his head had just fallen down," she said.

Jordan Taylor had been buckled in his seat. But the precaution did not protect him from what doctors term an atlanto-occipital dislocation. In other words, the force of the impact had shoved his skull an inch forward, separating it from his spine. It's an injury some call an "orthopedic decapitation."

"At that point I saw my arm, but I didn't care, because I was screaming for Jordan, and I didn't get a response," Perez said. "Two other people who had shown up were helping me because I couldn't really stand. They helped me to the ground, and I am just screaming his name."

Doctors say that 98 out of 100 times, this injury leads to death. Taylor, fortunately, survived long enough to reach a hospital.

"This was the first [patient] with this condition that I've seen survive," said Dr. Richard Roberts, the pediatric neurosurgeon who treated Taylor at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth. "It's not very frequent that this kind of patient makes it to us."

For most of those fortunate enough to survive, a lifetime of paralysis awaits. But after a recovery that even Roberts says he cannot completely explain, the boy was deemed well enough to be released Friday, three months after the accident.

And after he was discharged, Jordan walked out the hospital doors.