Warning: This story contains descriptions of a serious eye injury.
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When 10-year-old Whyatt Barrass picked up a bow and arrow in his bedroom one afternoon in January, he didn't think it would end with him being airlifted to Westmead Children's Hospital for a stay in the intensive care unit (ICU).
On January 9, 2023 emergency services were called to Whyatt's Hill End Road home following reports a 10-year-old boy had been struck in the eye with an arrow.
Whyatt had tried to load the compound bow himself using his foot and during the loading leaned over to get a better angle when the arrow was released and pierced through his left eye and travelled into his brain, taking a piece of his skull with it.
Whyatt's mother Beth Honeysett remembers the day it happened. She was on bed rest following surgery when her eight-year-old daughter Santana ran into her bedroom.
"It was quite scary. She (Santana) ran into my room and said 'mum, Whyatt shot himself.' And my first thought was 'oh here we go, leg, arm, something'," she said.
"But no, I get in there and he (Whyatt) is kind of up against the wall. He was still communicative and he was still awake but he couldn't verbally speak, he had to sound out. It was quite shocking.
She ran into my room and said 'mum, Whyatt shot himself.'
- Beth Honeysett
Whyatt's next six weeks were spent in hospital with his mum by his side.
"I stayed in Sydney the whole time, I stayed at the hospital through the week and at Ronald McDonald House on the weekends when the other children would come up," Beth said.
"Some nights I spent on the ward on a fold out lounge next to Whyatt and other nights I slept down in a hostel ... but we were in a six-patient bedroom and every other patient but Whyatt was a newborn baby."
A few weeks in after a checkup scan, Beth and Whyatt - who were in Lithgow on their way back to Mudgee - received an urgent call from their neurosurgeon. Whyatt was rushed back into surgery after an aneurysm was found in his brain.
Owing to the nature of his injury, it was feared that Whyatt would suffer from permanent damage, either in his eye or in his brain. But he has reacted well to surgery and recently his eye has been healing well on its own, though his vision isn't back to normal quite yet.
"They want to do surgery on his eye but they don't know when because he can see out of it and they're not quite understanding how... his eye was all black, but in the last month the colour is slowly coming down and they didn't think any colour would come back," Beth said.
Whyatt underwent six surgeries - including a craniotomy, countless tests and is still on antibiotics and anti-seizure medication until more tests and surgeries later in the year to check his eye and brain for any long-term injuries.
Despite the ordeal, even during recovery, Whyatt's sense of humour was firmly intact.
"Whyatt would tell the nurses that he couldn't walk so they would wheel him around all day in a wheelchair," Beth said.
"But the Neurosurgeon, he was a cool surgeon, he didn't let Whyatt milk on his injury, he would say 'you're a healthy, capable ten-year-old'."
With the ordeal largely behind them, Whyatt is in good spirits and knows how lucky he is to come away relatively unscathed. His family and friends were there for him all the way.
"My brother and sisters and my cousins have all looked after me," Whyatt said.
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