Heartbreaking first word brain-damaged boy told his mum after pier flip accident
A teenage boy left in a vegetative state after diving from a pier in Kent has managed to speak for the first time in weeks.
Jack Dolan, 15, flipped off Stone Pier in the coastal town of Margate and landed face-first into the sea on June 23.
Left virtually brain dead by the accident, London doctors told his family the youngster may only have years – or weeks – to live.
But as he looked at his mother in the eye while in pain with a bellyache, he simply said ‘help’ to her and in front of two nurses.
In the weeks since the dive, Jack’s stepfather, David Dolan, says he’s watched his stepson move his arms and wiggle his toes.
He even smiled seeing when the family dog, a German Shepherd Mastiff cross called Chewbacca, jumped onto his hospital bed and licked him.
‘Jack is blowing everything doctors said out the water,’ David told KentOnline.
‘He is moving his arms, wiggling his toes, holding eye contact and, while in pain with belly ache, looked his mum in the eye and said ‘help’.
‘We are putting him into experimental private treatment to see how much of Jack we can get back, so the goalposts have moved, the therapy is £8,000 and the tank for hyperbaric oxygen therapy to have in the home if it shows improvement is £38,000.
‘He has defied the odds and is fighting so we have to do all we can to fight for him.’
A pupil at the Howard School in Rainham, Jack had gone to the beach for the first time without his parents when he decided to pull a trick he’d done so many times before.
He went to the edge of Stone Pier, just near Weymouth Harbour, about four metres high and performed a flip.
But unlike his many successful attempts before, Jack hit the water head-first and was knocked out. He was submerged in the water for eight minutes.
‘I know he was laughing, I can actually see him doing it, smiling and being a complete show off,’ Dave said last month.
‘The last thing he would have known was being happy.’
Jack was flown to King’s College Hospital by air ambulance with MRI scans showing his brain was beyond repair.
Yet when his life-support system was switched off, he began breathing by himself for the first time.
Jack’s mother, Lisa, will soon give up her job in the NHS to care for her child’s end-of-life carer.
Jack has been suffering from heart issues, seizures and a chest infection and will likely suffer from a stroke in the future as he has spots on his brain, David added.
The family have raised nearly £31,000 to help cover the costs of Jack’s treatment.
Sam Cass, who organised the JustGiving page, said Dave and Lisa are now hoping to get an oxygen chamber installed at their house.
‘My heart is breaking watching my lively, fun-loving boy slowly and painfully fade away,’ Sam wrote in an update earlier this month.
‘I want to save him, I’ve always saved him but this is beyond even me.’
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