Surgeons in Australia have reattached the head of a toddler to his spine in a “miracle” procedure following a car crash which left him with a severed neck. Jaxon Taylor, a 16-month-old, suffered an “internal decapitation” last month after a head-on collision. He was taken to a hospital in Brisbane where doctors used a fragment of one of his ribs to graft his severed vertebrae together. "A lot of children wouldn't survive that injury in the first place," Dr Geoff Askin, the operating surgeon, told Channel Seven. "And if they did and they were resuscitated, they may never move or breathe again ... How that spinal cord has managed to go around that corner and not sever is a miracle." Jaxon survived the operation and will have to wear a halo brace for about eight weeks. "It is … it's a miracle," Rylea Taylor, his mother, told Channel Seven. Describing the accident, she said that "the second I pulled him out, I knew that his neck was broken". Her nine-year-old daughter Shayne suffered abdominal injuries. "For a split second I saw dust and then the force hit,” Ms Taylor wrote in an online account of the crash. “The collision [was] so hard that all airbags were deployed. My nine-year-old daughter was unconscious, my 16 months old son was screaming - both were bleeding from their tiny faces… "As bystanders and my in-laws, who were travelling behind us, assisted getting my 9-year-old from the car, I tried to remain calm, I tried desperately to hold my children, I told them we were ok … Even though my heart told me otherwise, I tried not to cry, I tried to be strong because they needed me." Source
