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November 14, 2007

Prayers, support strengthened family of boy hurt in fall from golf cart

Mike LaBella

HAVERHILL, Mass. — It was the seventh day of her son’s medically induced coma, and Kristi Scates was beginning to lose hope.

Kristi and her husband, Larry, had been sleeping in a family room at Massachusetts General Hospital at night and keeping watch over their son Shawn during the day.

Shawn, 9, had undergone brain surgery for a severe head injury he received when he fell off the back of a golf cart in which he was riding July 16 while visiting friends in Newton, N.H.

The prognosis for Shawn’s recovery was looking grim. Kristi Scates posted a simple message on the hospital’s online patient care page she had set up to communicate with friends, family and others in their hometown of Haverhill.

“I didn’t know if he’d make it,” Kristi Scates said. “I posted on the Web page a message saying I was losing hope, and the responses came flooding in.”

They were words of inspiration from Haverhill clergy members, from parishioners in various churches, from teachers in Haverhill schools, from friends, family members and strangers who’d never met Shawn. They began filling up the pages that Kristi Scates eagerly read — and which helped sustain her faith during a trying time.

“I still return to the Web site to reread those letters of inspiration,” Kristi Scates said. “Those many messages of hope helped me be stronger and keep my focus.”

On his eighth day in the intensive care unit, Shawn began to move.

“His first words to me were, ‘I love you,’” Kristi Scates said. “From that point on, we knew things were going to be better.”

Shawn spent three weeks in the intensive care unit followed by a week in the hospital’s pediatric unit, then six weeks at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. He returned home Oct. 2 and now attends therapy several times a week. His brain injury was so severe, his mother said, that he has to relearn motor skills such as walking and improve cognitive skills involving memory.

Over the past month, he’s gone from crawling to walking independently. To help develop his memory, he plays a game with a therapy dog.

“I hide dog toys in the room, and he has to find them,” Shawn said.

“This therapy helps Shawn remember what he hid and where he hid the items,” Kristi Scates said.

Shawn, who was in third grade at Golden Hill Elementary School last year, has a brother Alex, 11, who is in sixth grade at Nettle Middle School and a brother Brendon, 6, who is in first grade at Golden Hill.

Shawn says he doesn’t remember much about the accident but can easily recall the friends he made during his stay at the hospital.

“A boy named Sebastian was riding his bicycle down a sidewalk, and a truck crashed into him,” Shawn said. “He went 20 feet into the air and landed in the street.”

Kristi and Larry Scates stayed at the hospital for several more days after Shawn’s condition began improving, and regularly posted messages informing those back home of the slow but steady progress their son was making.

“It was a very traumatic time for our family, especially our children,” Kristi Scates said. “Things are just starting to get back to normal for us.”

The messages and prayers of hope continued pouring in, as did many other forms of support for the Scates family.

This summer, six of Shawn’s friends from Golden Hill operated a lemonade stand and collected $78 for Shawn. They sent him a framed photograph of them at their stand, along with a necklace and bracelet that carried messages of hope.

While Shawn was at Mass General, parents at Crowell School, which is in the same Riverside neighborhood where the Scates reside, gave Kristi and Larry Scates $180 in gasoline cards to help them pay for their daily trips to Boston.

The Crowell PTO gave the family $100 so they could buy groceries. Golden Hill teachers sent the family $100, and staff at Precious Gems Preschool on Groveland Street donated gift cards to the family.

“Larry was out of work for about a month, so these generous gifts really helped us a lot,” Kristi Scates said.

Last week, a group of Golden Hill parents, led by parent Julie Meneghini, held a chili cook-off fundraiser at Nettle Middle School that brought in $1,900 for the Scates family.

“We’re going to use it to pay medical bills that aren’t covered by insurance and for rehabilitation equipment such as braces for Shawn,” Kristi Scates said.

Shawn has always been a very active boy, his mother said, and had participated in many sports at the YMCA in Haverhill, including rock climbing, swimming, indoor hockey and basketball. These activities and more are on hold for Shawn until he is further along in his recovery.

“We’re hoping he can return to Golden Hill (school) in January, but it depends on the progress he makes,” Kristi Scates said. “I look at this whole situation, and although Shawn’s accident was very bad, nothing but positive things came out of this, including the tremendous amount of support we’ve received from strangers, from friends, from those in the schools and from family members. The support and love of friends and family have kept us strong.”

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