The teen’s mother says his only memory is of waking up face down at the bottom of the pool, drinking water and completely unable to move.
A typical summer day left a family in shock after a 13-year-old boy tried to escape a wasp by diving back into the pool at a local community center.
Now, Anya Camper is praying for a miracle that will allow her son Semyon “SJ” Williams Jr. to walk and use his arms again. It all went wrong on June 20, the first day of summer, when SJ and his friends wanted to go to the pool in their Frisco neighborhood in North Texas.
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What happened was as horrific an accident as anyone could imagine. “Mainly, he and his friends were just playing at running away from a wasp and it just takes off and just dives into the pool,” Anya said, as covered by KTVT.
She describes her son as an avid swimmer, however, the football player’s water skills couldn’t help him when he apparently jumped into the shallow end. “He’s not sure which dive he made,” Anya noted, saying her son only had one memory of that fateful accident.
All he can remember is coming to on his stomach at the back of the pool, swallowing water and unable to move. Anyway. “He couldn’t move. He was actually swallowing water. So it’s hard to hear,” she told SJ of that moment. “He actually said to me, ‘Mom, I thought I was going to drown because I couldn’t move.’”
SJ was rescued from the pool by a good friend and rushed to Youngsters’ Wellbeing in Dallas by ambulance. After a series of tests, the family discovered that he had fractured his neck and severed his spinal cord. He had neck surgery on June 21, but never regained the use of his body.
Dr. Bruno Braga, pediatric neurosurgeon at the hospital, reported KXAS In Dallas, SJ fractured the fourth and sixth cervical vertebrae, as well as elements in front and behind the spinal canal.
“The fact that he has no motor or sensory function due to the level of injury is not a good indication that he will recover much, but it is too early to say and we just have to wait and see,” Braga told the outlet.
“Quadriplegic — when he said those words, that’s a distinct kind of feeling,” Anya said of what doctors told her.
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“You hear about issues like this, you see issues like this, you never expect it to be your story until it is,” Anya told KXAS. “In terms of her front door, she shakes you up, that’s exactly what she did for us.”
However, SJ’s grandfather, Louis Camper, mentioned that the family is not giving up on SJ’s future, but they are also being realistic. “The truth is that this could be a long road. It’s going to be a marathon for us and now we have to help him and be with him every step of the way,” he mentioned.
“It hits home. At 13, you’re just starting to live, you know,” he continued. “And then we’re true religious believers. And it’s not over until God says so.”
For now, SJ’s mother has taken time off work to be by her son’s side. “We are praying and believing that God will do a miracle,” she said, “he will do a miracle for my son because he has so much more to live for.”
He’s looking for me to fix this. And that’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t fix this.
If SJ’s prognosis doesn’t change, everything will have to change for the boy and his family. In the meantime, Anya says she feels helpless. “As a mother, it’s just heartbreaking because, like I said, you want to be really helpless,” she said. “He’s looking to me to fix this. And that’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t fix this. So it’s hard.”
A GoFundMe was organized by SJ’s brother Louis, where he shared that on the 8th SJ passed his swallowing test and can now start eating regular meals and drinking normally. In his description of the events, Louis praised SJ’s friend, writing, “If it weren’t for one of his friends noticing that he wasn’t ‘just floating’… my mother would be planning a funeral.”
With nearly 1,000 donations to date, Louis’ fundraiser on behalf of his brother SJ has raised over $56,000 toward its $100,000 goal, as of this writing.
SJ remains at Youngsters’s Well being, but the hospital says it cannot decide at this time how much longer he will need to remain in their care.