One local boy
directly benefits

The monies raised from this year’s Telethon will benefit a variety of areas at Children’s Hospital, including the Laboratory, the Anesthesia Department, the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), Radiology and Surgery. And every penny raised during the CMN broadcast stays at Children’s Hospital.

Children’s Hospital
Patient Profile:
5-year-old Chance
Shular of Seymour
Chance Shular, 5, has a name that is very indicative of his personality. He is adventurous and carefree, and he isn’t afraid to take chances. He and his brother, Storm, 10, love the outdoors and have plenty to keep them occupied at their house in Seymour, including 4-wheelers, a large yard, a trampoline and a creek. Being the parents of two young and active boys, Barry and Kim Shular must constantly be alert of where their children are and what they are doing.
On Saturday, June 1, 2002, the boys were under the supervision of a baby sitter, and nobody could have predicted what was going to happen that day. It was the day Chance’s fearless nature led to an accident that gave his parents the scare of their lives.
Barry had been gone about 45 minutes when he got a call from the baby sitter saying that Chance had an accident on his 4-wheeler.
“I talked to Chance on the phone,” Barry said, “and when I asked if he was OK, he said, ‘Yeah, Daddy. I’m just sleepy.’ So I stopped what I was doing and came home immediately.”
When Barry arrived home, he found Chance asleep on his bed. He could not see any serious effects from the accident, but just to be safe, he decided to take Chance to Children’s Hospital.
At Children’s, Chance had a CT scan, and when Kim arrived, the results had already come back.
Barry and Kim were very pleased to hear that the CT showed no sign of damage.
The Shulars stayed at Children’s Hospital until Tuesday due to a complication that was not discovered until Sunday afternoon. Emergency Department physician Charlotte Sutton, M.D., admitted Chance to Children’s Hospital on Saturday night, because several hours after the accident, he still was not responding normally. “Dr. Sutton said that Chance wasn’t waking up the way he should, but that this was pretty normal with head trauma,” Kim said. “They wanted to watch him overnight to make sure he started waking up more. There was still nothing significant to worry about.”
The news grew worse. Hospitalist Heather Edgely, M.D., noticed something different about Chance’s eye movement. He could look forward, left and right, but he could not make his eye move up and down. Dr. Edgely ordered a stat CT scan, and the whole frightening process started over for the Shulars, except this time they knew something was wrong.
The CT scan came back clear but Gary Gitschlag, M.D., a pediatric ophthalmologist examined Chance the next morning and discovered that one of Chance’s eye muscles was entrapped in an orbital fracture caused by the impact of the accident. The Dr. removed the muscle from the fracture and built a platform to prevent the muscle from falling down and getting entrapped again.
When Chance recovered from surgery, all the energy that had built up inside him was unleashed. “Once he woke up, he was going 90 miles an hour again,” Kim said. “And he hasn’t slowed down since.”
Be sure to watch WBIR-TV 10 from Children’s Hospital on Saturday, May 31 and Sunday, June 1st and call in to help make this year’s event even more successful than last year’s. You never know when you may have to rely on the services of Children’s Hospital.

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