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Milton girl keeps smiling after golf club accident

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Jessica Burton, 7, plays in her milton family's backyard swimming pool. She was hit in the head with a golf club in October and is recovering well from the injuries.

MILTON — Jessica Burton looks like any other happy, healthy 7-year-old splashing in her grandfather’s pool.

She comes up for air so seldom you wonder how she can be breathing.

But when her head’s above water, you might notice a thick scar zigzagging across her scalp.

That scar, along with a few lines around her left eye and nose, are the only visible reminders of an accident that could have killed Jessica eight months ago.

Jessica’s family still isn’t sure exactly what happened to her Oct. 24, though they have some good guesses.

All they know for sure was Jessica had been playing with friends outside the apartment complex where she lived in at 167 N. Janesville St. when something awful happened.

Her friends brought her home bloody and barely conscious, Kelly Burton, Jessica’s mother, said.

“She came in the door and just let out this scream,” Kelly said. “My boyfriend scooped her up, put her in a towel and said, ‘Let’s go.’”

Kelly and her boyfriend took Jessica to Mercy Hospital, where she was flown by helicopter to University Hospital in Madison. Jessica doesn’t remember the helicopter ride or anything about the accident.

At first, Jessica’s friends told her family she was hit by a stray golf ball from the nearby driving range. But the family and police quickly realized a golf club, not a ball, did this kind of damage.

That night was one of the longest of Kelly and her family’s lives. The club had hit Jessica squarely in the eye. She had bleeding on the brain and a chip of bone on her optic nerve. Kelly could see a bone sticking out of her forehead, she said.

“They were afraid that bone would cause her to lose her vision,” Jessica’s grandfather Marv Wopat said.

Since then, Jessica has had three surgeries—one to remove the chip on her eye, one to repair her broken nose and one to put metal plates in her head. She still has at least two surgeries to go. She was out of school for three months.

Today, Jessica doesn’t have too much permanent damage. Her left eye has lost a little vision and droops slightly, and her mother says she’s clumsier now than she used to be.

Yet through it all, Jessica has kept a positive attitude. A photo of Jessica after one of her surgeries shows her smiling with grim determination, one eye shut under a jagged scar, the other sparkling blue.

“She’s pretty amazing,” Kelly said. “I brought her home (from the hospital), and she had these stitches, and her eyes were bulging, and she wanted to go trick-or-treating so bad.”

The family compromised by letting her pass out candy on the stoop.

“One little boy came out and said ‘Cool mask,’” Kelly said.

The family is still disappointed the child who swung the club didn’t come forward. Kelly has a suspicion of who did it, and she thought about filing a lawsuit, but she can’t prove it, she said. Besides, she knows it was an accident.

“I’m just thankful she’s here,” she said.