But he can eat pizza, play with his brother and sisters, and smile, sort of. He’s exceeded his doctors’ expectations and slowly is getting back to the business of being a kid.
“Everybody’s amazed,” said Dr. Kelly Solms, a member of Javon’s pediatric team at Memorial University Medical Center.
Javon spent nine days sedated and hooked up to a breathing tube after he was mauled by a pit bull on an East Savannah playground June 21. There isn’t any nice way to describe his wounds, witnesses and doctors say; his face was shredded in the attack.
Dr. Cliff Cannon spent more than five hours putting Javon back together that night, meticulously
sewing more than 200 stitches in a surgery that lasted from about 10 p.m. until 3 a.m. Cannon said he “couldn’t be more pleased” with how Javon has healed. And things will just get better for the 7-year-old, he said.
“Right now, even though he looks good, he’ll look totally different in six months.”
The biggest concern for Javon’s mother, Tracie Roberson, is that his right cheek remains paralyzed; he can’t grin.
That may just be because of swelling, Cannon said. But if not, if it turns out one of the nerves in his cheek is strained, Cannon said that nerve likely will heal. Worst case scenario, if a facial nerve has been severed, another one might take over the muscles it controlled.
It’ll be a year before doctors can be certain as to whether the movement will come back. If it doesn’t, Cannon said Javon would be a good candidate for nerve replacement surgery.
They may be able to restore his smile, but doctors can’t cut out the memory of the attack.
Trauma
Javon won’t go any farther than the front porch of the small, gray cinder block home on Treat Avenue he shares with his brother and three sisters. Tracie Roberson says she wants to move; the family lives less than two blocks from Treat Park, where Javon was attacked as he tried to scramble onto the slide his sisters and brother had climbed to get away from the dogs that circled them.
But Tracie Roberson is single, with five kids and no work. She doesn’t have the cash for a deposit on a new place. Plus, it’s not easy to find a landlord who will take her Section 8 housing voucher, she says, and even harder to find a four-bedroom unit.
Roberson and her five children share a three-bedroom house.
Pediatricians at Memorial referred Javon to a psychologist to help him with the emotional trauma caused by the attack. But his mother couldn’t make the appointment because she didn’t have a car.
That changed last week, when an anonymous Savannahian donated an older-model Mercedes hatchback, and Dixie Motors fixed the car’s air conditioning for free.
Family
For now, Javon’s life is mostly limited to the little gray house on Treat Avenue.
But he makes his own fun. On a recent afternoon, he was jumping around the living room giving an imaginary concert on a plastic, tune-playing guitar that his mom got from the dollar store. His sister, 6-year-old Joetrecia Mikell, joined him, “playing” a Blondie track on her pink guitar and dropping down on her knees like a rock star as the song reached its crescendo.
Joetrecia watched the June 21 attack on her brother from a few feet away. So did his 12-year-old sister, Jasmine Williams, and his brother, 11-year-old Johnny Roberson, who were huddled with Joetrecia at the highest point on the playground, the top of a slide. Javon had been swinging on the other side of the playground and didn’t hear Bernard Moultrie run toward the playground, yelling for the children to run from two vicious dogs on the loose. Javon ran to the slide too late and was pulled down by one of the pit bills.
“We thought it was going to come for us next,” Jasmine said.
A couple hours after the living room concert, Javon and his siblings piled into the Mercedes and headed to Chuck E. Cheese’s. The restaurant is a splurge, Tracie Roberson said, but she wanted Javon to have the chance to run around and be a kid.
As soon as he walked through the restaurant’s doors, Javon took off. He ate pepperoni pizza, rode the Kentucky Derby on a plastic horse and drove his sisters around in a “monster truck.” His mother hardly could keep up with him.
“I’m glad he’s having fun,” she said as she scanned the room, looking for Javon.
The attack
It’s been a little more than a month since Javon was mauled, and 15 days since he came home from the hospital.
Henry Murphy — a neighbor who helped save Javon’s life — says he’s keeping an eye on the boy from across the street. Murphy said Javon came over to see him once since he was brought home. He’s giving Javon his time, keeping track of him by the comings and goings of the family’s car.
Murphy, 57, rushed into Treat Park with a brick the night of the attack. With his arm wrapped around Javon, he bashed the dog with the brick while Murphy’s lifelong friend, Herbert Swain, also 57, tried to scare away a second dog that was circling the children as they huddled on the slide. Swain came to Murphy’s aid and got in several square licks before the dog let go. Moultrie tossed Swain a gun, and he shot the pit bull.
The dog that attacked Javon was euthanized later that night. The second dog, the one circling the slide, was caught by animal control officers the next morning. That dog was euthanized several days later, after the owner of the two dogs said they didn’t want the surviving one back.
“(Animal control officers) felt like it was too risky to try to adopt her out,” police spokeswoman Gena Moore said.
Forgetting
As he lay sedated in a hospital bed in the days after the attack, Javon slept fitfully, his mother says. He flailed his arms and seemed to be trying to fight something off.
Tracie Roberson was under the impression that doctors were giving her son “a medicine to make him forget” the attack. Sadly, no such elixir exists.
“When he woke up, he said, ‘Momma, them dogs got me,’” Tracie Roberson said.
For now, keeping Javon comfortable while he heals is Tracie’s main priority and the priority for the Savannahians who have become his champions.
Pete Chaison, board chairman of the youth development program The First Tee of Savannah, is taking donations for the one thing Javon wants most, an Xbox. Chaison got his friend, dentist Byron Davis, to donate reconstructive dental work.
Javon’s teeth were knocked out in the attack. Medicaid provides only very basic dental care, and he’ll need pricey procedures as an adult that Davis has volunteered to do for free.
“People are really stepping up to the plate, trying to help him,” Chaison said. “As these stories roll off the front page and something else replaces them, you just can’t forget this little child.”
(Savannah Now - July 23, 2011)
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