Dawson Barnard experienced a horrible injury the night of July 3.  He was at his lake that night with a small group of friends, and when trying to get down from a shipping container after climbing it to take a photo, slipped, and landed on the concrete pad where the container was sitting and he landed on both feet.  He broke both bones in his right leg.  To make a good story better, that day was his 16th birthday, and to top it all off, his broken leg was his driving leg.

Shortly after his injury, his parents took him to Good Samaritan in Mt. Vernon and at around midnight they said they couldn’t do anything for him so he was transferred to Cardinal Glennon in St. Louis at 3 a.m.  There he had one surgery and stayed almost a week in the hospital.  He went back to the hospital for a second surgery, that one only requiring him to stay one extra day and since then he has had to go back around every four weeks for checkups.  “Waking up after surgery, having been under-medicated, and having metal rods sticking out of me.” This was the hardest for Dawson. When he was asked what lessons he learned from this, he said “I can’t say I’ve learned anything, I knew I should have listened to my gut and just not done it all together.” He was also asked how he’s stronger after going through all this, he said,  “Well, there’s about twice as much metal as there was bone now. I guess once my muscles adjust and I’m fully healed, my right leg will potentially be way stronger than my left.”

“Phone cameras don’t work well for low light photos, and never climb on top of something unless you have a foolproof plan for getting down.”  This is what Dawson has to say to his friends about his experience.  When it all started things were looking really bad, but he’s improving every day to try to get back to where he was.