In 2002, 2-year-old, Joseph Sisler plummeted from the two-story window of a Steamboat Springs, COL. hotel. During nap time with his grandmother, Yvonne Bryan, like the rambunctious kid he was, he refused to lay down. Instead, he decided looking out the window was a better idea. He slightly pushed against the unfastened screen of the open window and tumbled out. When he hit the pavement there was no blood, only the crying of a small boy in pain.
“The cry I heard was like there was there a head injury, I remember it from when I was taking care of a patient or two in the hospital,” said Bryan. “It was something similar.”
Now, 20-years-old Sisler has no recollection of that day, but from the countless retellings, he knows every detail.
“You know how you feel like you know something and it goes through your head like a movie,” said Sisler. “Kind of like a dream, but you don’t know if it is real or not. […] Sometimes I feel like I have memories from it, like falling out the window.”
After the incident, Bryan immediately ran into the living room. There his mother, Joan, aunt, and aunt’s boyfriend were relaxing after the exhausting day they had. His father and grandfather had gone hiking in the mountains. Stunned everyone frantically rushed down the jagged metal stairs to get to him. When Joan saw him she simply laid on the ground with him until the ambulance arrived. The ambulance drove the two of them to Yampa Valley Medical Center. There, the doctors performed a CT scanned on him, the results showed he had a brain bleed.
“The miracle of Joe was that he had this brain bleed, but broke nothing else,” said Joan. “He landed on concrete but broke nothing. Not an arm, not a leg, a back.”
However, if they did not act quickly he would either have permanent brain damage or die, but there was nothing they could do for him there. Denver’s Children’s Hospital Colorado was their only option.
“They worked with a small airline that would transport him to the hospital,” said Bryan. “It was Joanie and I and little Joe […] Joanie rode in the back with the nurse that went along with him.”
They arrived at the Denver airport, but there was only room for two in the helicopter. Sisler and his mother were flown to Children’s Hospital, while Bryan stayed behind and waited for the pilot to drive her to the hospital.
“I want to meet the nurse that was in the helicopter with me because he was a male nurse and he is the reason I want to become a nurse,” said Sisler.
He was scanned again; the bleed was worse and he would have to undergo lifesaving surgery. He was in good hands, at the hospital was an accomplished doctor named Michael Handler. Not long before Sisler’s accident Handler successfully separated conjoined twins. Sisler survived, but only time would tell if his accident had changed his life.
“At the time I had a really big swollen head,” said Sisler. “I mean as a kid I had a big head, to begin with, but just think of a big head on a tiny body. But after my surgery, I had a head the size of a basketball that’s how swollen it was.”
Despite a very swollen head, Sisler was released from the hospital four days after the surgery. His family drove back home to Valley Center, Kansas to resume life as normally as possible.
“We never had to go see a specialist, we never had to do physical therapy,” said Joan
“By the Fourth of July, you couldn’t even tell. […] You would have never known. He was wearing his children’s mercy hospital t-shirt on the Fourth of July and just running around the back yard at Memaw’s house.”
Eighteen years later, a scar that runs along the side of his head is the only evidence of the accident. The effects he feels are occasional migraines and pain along his scar, and peripheral deficits in his right eye.
“The best thing to come from this situation…not the headaches,” said Sisler. “It’s probably the amount of love and support I get from people.”
Rebecca Sisler 