The 19-month-old toddler from New Boston, N.H., is expected to make a full recovery after she fell off a reclining chair onto the end of a colored pencil that pierced her eye.
The writing utensil was lodged inside her brain, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader.
“If you can consider someone lucky who has a pencil go through her brain, you have to consider this girl remarkably lucky,” Dr. Darren Orbach, one of more than 50 doctors and specialists who were assembled to handle Smith’s case. “If you asked me to sit down with a patient’s scan and draw a line that would go from one end of the brain to the other, avoiding every major blood vessel and even avoiding critical areas of the brain. I would be hard-pressed to find a pathway that would cause so little injury.”
For 45 minutes, Dr. Shenandoah Robinson slowly and carefully pulled the pencil out, according to WHDH.
“I would pull a little bit out. [A] doctor would shoot some images…I’d pull a little bit more out. It was nerve-racking,” Robinson said.
Olivia suffered three strokes as a result of the injury, but she is at home now and doing well, according to KTLA.