(Stock Daily Dish) – When Jeffrey Meister fell backwards onto a concrete landing, the base of his skull broke in half.
Doctors tell his parents that, in the moments after his fall, the fracture saved the Grand Ledge 17-year-old‘s life.
“If his skull had not cracked, he would be dead right now,” Ryan Meister, 34, said Monday from a waiting room just outside Sparrow Hospital‘s pediatric intensive care unit. “It relieved the pressure from the blood building up in his cranial cavity.”
Ryan said his son was walking up a flight of stairs at his girlfriend‘s house in Delta Township the evening of March 17.
At six-feet, two-inches tall, he might have been looking down at his cell phone when he smacked his head on a light fixture hanging above, midway up the stairs. He fell backward, his head hitting the concrete below. He hadn‘t been drinking that night.
Jeffrey‘s head injuries were extensive. Beyond the skull fracture, he bled around his brain and from places inside it.
He also suffered a stroke. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors removed the right side of his skull within an hour of his arrival. CONTINUE