- Ebony was enjoying a family day out at the beach when her son Jaeger, five, went to go on the merry-go-round at the nearby playground.
- Next, a stranger rushed over carrying Jaeger who had blood spurting from his right foot.
- The stranger explained the merry-go-round had torn off Jaeger’s little toe right off the foot.
- Ebony rushed her boy to hospital while others scoured the playground for the missing toe.
- Sadly, doctors couldn’t reattach it as the ligaments had stretched before it was brutally ripped from his foot.
- Ebony Verryt, from Geraldton, WA, tells how her little boy’s life had been changed forever…
I scooped up our one-year-old daughter, Billie, and tried to calm her down.
The poor thing had just walked into a cupboard and was sobbing.
“Take deep breaths, sweetheart,” I said.“You’re okay.”
Her big brother Jaeger, five, tried to distract her by pulling silly faces. Then he put a nappy on his head and did a dorky dance.
“I like to move it, move it,” he sang.
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When my husband Tom, 38, our son, Vahli, three, and I burst into laughter, Billie did, too. Thank goodness for our family jokester!
Life with three young kids was full on as I was studying nursing, and volunteered as a St John emergency medical technician. Tom also had his hands full as a refrigeration mechanic.
Family time was important and our boys loved the great outdoors, so in August 2023, we went for a picnic on the beach next to our local playground. Our friends, Megan and James, who was also a
paramedic, joined us with their three kids.
“We’re off,” James said as he and Tom headed across the road to get us some burgers.
The older kids went to play on the merry-go-round at the nearby playground while Megan and I sat with the babies.
Twenty minutes later, Megan’s son, Oliver, five, ran over to us from the playground.
“Jaegs has hurt his toe,” he said.
What’s he done now, I thought, as his rough play often led to scrapes and bruises.
Then, a stranger ran towards us with Jaeger in his arms.
My eyes grew wide.
“Must be bad,” I said, rushing to meet them.
Jaeger was crying and he gestured to the bloke carrying him.
“This man cut off my toe,” he wept.
Shocked, I saw blood spurting out from Jaeger’s right foot.
“What have you done?” I asked the man.
He seemed distraught.
“It’s gone,” he said, shakily.
He explained that his daughter had also been playing on the in-ground merry-go-round and he pushed it around for the kids. Jaeger was standing on the outer edge of it and his baby toe slipped into
an exposed gap. As the carousel rotated, the gap had closed because it was unbalanced and it tore off Jaeger’s toe.
I looked down in shock, grabbed Jaeger’s foot with my hands, and we put him on a bench.
Although I tried to be professional, the scene in front of me was straight out of a horror movie. There was blood everywhere.
Thankfully, a bystander offered his shirt and I ripped it to make a tourniquet around Jaeger’s foot to stop the bleeding.
James and Tom had seen the commotion and ran over.
“Take the kids out of here,” I instructed them.
Poor Vahli was ghostly pale at the sight of his brother’s missing toe.
“He’ll be okay,” I reassured him.
The hospital was only three minutes away, so James and I carried Jaeger to the car.
“Find that toe,” I told Tom, hoping docs could reattach it.
I sat with Jaeger in the front seat and when I tried to adjust his feet, he screamed.
Realising how badly hurt he was, I fought back tears.
At hospital, Jaeger was quickly put on painkillers as we waited for his toe.
“I want to speak to Vahli and Daddy,” Jaeger said softly, so we called Tom on FaceTime.
“Are you okay?” Vahli asked his brother. “Did you find your toe?”
“It went flying off at the playground,” Jaeger said sadly.
Within an hour, Tom came in with the missing digit. It’d been wedged between the top and bottom parts of the merry-go-round and emergency services had to dismantle the ride to retrieve it.
When Jaeger’s tourniquet was removed, blood poured out again.
It took two doctors and three nurses to stem it while he had an X-ray.
Then, one of them pulled me aside.
“We might have been able to reattach it, but it wasn’t a clean cut,” he said, explaining Jaeger’s ligaments had likely stretched before his toe was brutally ripped from his foot, making it too damaged to repair.
I broke down, shattered that Jaeger had lost his little toe forever, simply by being a kid.
Surgeons wheeled him to theatre, where they cut back the bone, cleaned the wound and made skin flaps to close it over.
When Jaeger saw his scars during a dressing change, he was distraught.
“Will my toe grow back, like a lizard’s tail does?” he asked.
We wanted to be honest with him.
“You don’t need it, buddy,” Tom said, “you’ll be able to run just as fast without it.”
“Okay,” he said.
A week later, Jaeger came home in a wheelchair, but he was walking within two days. Incredibly, before long, he was jumping on the trampoline and back to cheering up his little sister with his funny dances.
It’s been five months since the horrid accident.
There’s a scar and a little nub of skin where his toe used to be, but it doesn’t bother him much.
I don’t blame anyone for what happened, but I wish my boy hadn’t gone through that trauma. I’m glad I had the medical experience to contain the blood.
When someone asks Jaeger where his toe is or how it happened, he shrugs.
“It fell off in the playground,” he usually says.
Sometimes, though, he makes up stories.
“It got bitten off by a shark at the beach,” he tells people, hiding a grin.
We suspect this will end up being his favourite party story for years to come.
