The Sergeant wrote his First Sergeant telling him of his experience. "I'm passing to you my experience over the last couple of days in hopes that maybe it can be passed on to others and possibly prevent someone else's siblings from receiving life threatening injuries.

"My two sons, 9 and 11, are usually pretty safety conscious. When they take off on their bikes or roller blades they almost always grab their helmets and throw them on. But, on the other hand, when they're in a hurry, they sometimes do not. Well, we as parents try to catch those incidents and immediately make the correction. Sometimes we get complacent and don't even notice. 

"Well, Wednesday evening right after school, we took off on our usual roller blading excursion around the neighborhood (Without helmets this time) and sure enough, my youngest, Trent, got his blades caught up with his brother's, got turned around and landed right on the back of his head. I'm amazed that he wasn't knocked unconscious. He was hurting pretty bad and had blood coming from his right ear and nose. Sure, kids fall and bump their head, but this was giving me a serious message to take him to the hospital. 

"We got to Langley emergency and after being assessed by the doctor, a CT Scan was ordered. While waiting, Trent was lethargic and got sick in the waiting room and his ear was still bleeding. We eventually got into the CT room and believe me, it's not a pretty sight seeing your youngest son lying in that machine. The CT results showed a fracture to the back right side of his skull. The Langley doctor wanted a neurosurgeon to look at the scan results, but none are available at Langley. So Trent was sent, by ambulance, to the Naval hospital in Portsmouth. As a parent, you can imagine my thoughts during that long drive as I followed that ambulance. He was admitted into the Pediatric ICU there. Several doctors came in to assess his situation. Again, as I stood back and watched, I saw my son laying there with an IV in each arm, an oxygen tube in his nose and 5 doctors huddled around him and couldn't believe that all of this was a result of roller blading. 

"When I was a kid, we did far more dangerous things and never even thought about helmets. Through the night they had to wake him up every hour and do these sobriety tests to check his brain functions. I felt so sorry for him and wanted to trade places with him. Luckily, my son will recover from this, but you can imagine the lecture I got from the neurosurgeon about helmets and the recent lives he has saved and not saved because of the lack of using them. The message that I would like to pass on is, don’t ignore any possibility that this could happen to your kids. Please see to it that they wear their helmets when blading, skate boarding or biking. If this message can prevent one injury, it was worth writing."

- Steven D. Rommel, MSgt