The teen’s mother says his only memory is waking up face down at the bottom of the pool, taking in water and completely unable to move.
A typical summer day ended in shock for one family after a 13-year-old boy attempted to escape a wasp by diving back into the pool at a local community center.
Now, Anya Camper is praying for a miracle that will allow her son Semyon “SJ” Williams Jr. to walk and use his arms again. It all went wrong on June 20, the first day of summer, when SJ and his friends wanted to go to the pool in the North Texas community of Frisco.
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What happened was about as horrific an accident as anyone could ever imagine. “Basically, him and his friends were just playing running away from a wasp and he just takes off and just dives in the pool,” Anya said, as covered by KTVT.
She describes her son as an avid swimmer, but the football player’s skills in the water couldn’t help him when he apparently jumped into the shallow end. “He’s not sure exactly what dive he did,” Anya noted, saying that her son only had one memory of that fateful accident.
All he can recall is coming to consciousness face down at the bottom of the pool, taking in water and unable to move. At all. “He couldn’t move. He was literally drinking water. So it’s hard to hear,” she said of that moment for SJ. “He literally told me, ‘Mom, I thought I was going to drown because I couldn’t move.'”
SJ was rescued from the pool by a friend and quickly taken by ambulance to Children’s Health in Dallas. After a battery of tests, the family learned that he had fractured his neck and shattered his spinal cord. He had to have surgery on June 21 for his neck, but he may never regain the use of his body.
Dr. Bruno Braga, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the hospital, told KXAS in Dallas that SJ fractured his 4th and 6th cervical vertebrae, and parts both in front of and behind the spinal canal.
“The fact that he had no motor function or sensory function below the level of injury, that’s not a good indication that he’s going to recover much, but it’s too soon to tell and we just have to wait and see,” Braga told the outlet.
“Quadriplegic — when he said those words, that’s a different type of feeling,” said Anya of what doctors told her.
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“You hear about things like this, you see things like this, you never expect it to be your story until it is,” Anya told KXAS. “When it comes to your front door it shakes you, that’s exactly what it’s done for us.”
But SJ’s grandfather Louis Camper said the family isn’t giving up on SJ’s future, but they’re also being realistic. “The reality is, this is a long road. This is going to be a marathon for us and we have to support him and be with him every step of the way,” he said.
“It hits at the core. At 13 years old, you’re only just beginning to live, you know,” he continued. “And so we are true faith believers. And it’s not over until God say so.”
For now, SJ’s mother has taken a leave from her job to stay by her son’s side. “We’re praying and believing that God will do a miracle,” she said, “perform a miracle on my son because he has too much more for life to live.”
He’s looking to me to fix it. And that’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t fix this.
If SJ’s prognosis doesn’t change, everything has to change for the boy and his family. Meanwhile, Anya says she feels helpless. “So as a mom, it’s just gut-wrenching because, like I said, like to be literally helpless,” she said. “He’s looking to me to fix it. And that’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t fix this. So it’s hard.”
A GoFundMe has been set up by SJ’s brother Louis, where he shared that on Day 8 SJ passed his swallow study and can now begin to eat regular foods and drink normally. In his description of the events, Louis praised SJ’s friend, writing, “it weren’t for one of his friends realizing that he wasn’t ‘just floating’…my mom would would’ve been planning a funeral.”
With nearly 1,000 donations already, Louis’ fundraiser on behalf of his brother SJ has raised more than $56,000 toward its $100,000 goal, as of this writing.
SJ is still at Children’s Health with the hospital saying they are not able to determine at this time how much longer he will need to remain under their care.
