When the Disastrous Unexpected Happens

"The player had been down for about five minutes and then I decided I would walk over and offer my assistance just because I am a registered nurse."

"When I walked around to the player, I actually walked all the way around because I was scared to walk across the field in case they were going to start playing again."

"I walked over, told [Griffins coach Scott] Schultz that I was just there just to help. And he said the more the merrier ... So I got down on the ground and I looked and I saw that it was my own kid. And I said, 'This is my damn kid' -- and of course a few other words."

"Then I was immediately pulling up his eyelids to check his pupils One was really tiny and one was really big and so I knew that we were not in a good situation. And then his breathing slowed down considerably."

Sabrina Gronick, mother of injured player Hunter Gronick

Hunter Gronick, a player on the Greenall High School football team in Balgonie, Sask., was severely injured during a game in Swift Current on Thursday. (Emily Gronick via Go Fund Me)

 

Hunter Gronick's parents had come out to watch the high school football game where his team, the Balgonie Greenall Griffins, played against the Swift Current Comprehensive Colts on September 10. Hunter's mother noted an injured football player lying on the ground, attended by the coaches on the Griffins' sideline and as a registered nurse felt comfortable in offering her professional assistance for the injured player. She left her husband and walked over to the little group on the opposite side of the field, surrounding the player on the ground.

 

Little did she know that just moments earlier her son Hunter, a Grade 12 student at Saskatchewan's Greenall High School, a third-year member of the Griffins team, had stumbled, fallen and hit his head on the turf. He immediately afterward walked to the sideline, which was where he had collapsed. His mother was not witness to the occurrence from where she had been in the crowd of onlookers, but she was given the opportunity to view on video exactly what had occurred.  

"He tried to run with the ball and then he was either gently pushed, is what it appears as though or he actually tripped. It's hard to say because of the angle of the camera."

"There was nothing malicious about it. It was just something that  unfortunately happened."

"He immediately went to the sidelines and told his coaches they needed a [substitute]...Then the next thing his coach heard was that he said he couldn't hear, he couldn't see."

"He collapsed, became unresponsive and then he started to vomit."

Sabrina Gronick 

Mrs. Gronick called her husband Paul to come over to where she stood by the concerned group and her comatose son, and by the time he arrived to stand beside her, emergency personnel had also arrived and paramedics were examining their son, preparing to take Hunter to hospital. His mother informed the coach of her intention to accompany her son in the ambulance and the information was conveyed to the ambulance driver who responded they just needed five minutes before setting off, and when they did, it was without securing a place for Mrs. Gronick in the ambulance.

 

She and her husband followed in their own vehicle. When they arrived at the hospital in Swift Current, it was to discover that the initial diagnosis was that their son had suffered a brain bleed. Medical staff decided that Hunter would need a more intensive care environment and arrangements were swiftly made to airlift him to Regina to  undergo urgent surgery for a brain bleed. Fayher and mother got back into their car to drive the 250 kilometres east down the Trans-Canada Highway to Regina General Hospital. 

 

Gronick  started playing for the Griffins two years ago. (Emily Gronick via GoFundMe

 

They set off before the arrival of the STARS air ambulance in the hope that they would arrive back in Regina around the same time as the airlift since there was a 71-minute delay before the arrival of the air ambulance. Before they left, the ambulance driver approached Sabrina to tell her "I apologize that I was not waiting for you to get on. We had to go." Approaching Regina on the highway around midnight, they became aware that the air ambulance at that moment, was flying right above them.

 

At the hospital, Paul and Sabrina Gronick sat and waited as their son underwent surgery to remove a portion of his skull.

"He had to have the right side of his skull removed because there was so much pressure from the bleed that had happened."

"And so they've left that flap of bone off and that's just in case anything starts swelling again. They have been monitoring his pressures for his brain, and so far they seem to be within normal limits."

"Right now, it's still just a wait-and-see kind of game. And unfortunately they won't know for a while. The doctor told us ...that he can foresee this being months and months and months of a type of recovery and he said that he probably anticipated that he would be on the surgical intensive care unit for probably several weeks."

Sabrina Gronick 

 Doctors were able to determine that Hunter, though able to respond to pain stimulus in his legs and his right hand, there was no response on left hand. The Gronicks have two other children, both older than Hunter. His sister Emily created a GoFundMe campaign to "help ease some of the financial burden that comes with an unexpected, life-changing injury", according to the explanation on the GoFundMe campaign page.

 

Under severe emotional duress and concern for their son's future, the family has received community support that they describe as 'heartwarming' and for which they expressed their profound gratitutude.