Last Friday was one day Marc and Brea Pile will never forget. The couple have three children, Audrey (11), Nolan (6) and Olivia (4), and for the past ten years, they have run Marc and Brea Pile Show Horses in Hastings, Nebraska. On Friday afternoon, Brea and Marc were cleaning the buckets and watering the horses at the barn when their four year-old, Olivia, came out to the barn.
“There is one horse she likes to comb, but we don’t let her go in the pen with him,” Brea states. “She can sit on the fence and comb his mane, so, Marc told her not to go in the pen. He came back in to get another bucket, and, then went back outside to dump it. All of a sudden, Marc heard her crying, and he ran into the pen. Olivia was on the other side of the round bale covered in blood. He yelled for me, and I grabbed her over the fence and put her in the car and we rushed to the emergency room.”
When the scared parents arrived at the emergency room, Brea told them that she believed that Olivia had been kicked in the head by a horse. At that time, she just saw the laceration on her forehead, and it looked like a hoof had sliced it open–it was 5 cm by 4 cm and all the way to the skull. The doctors did CAT scans and found fractures in her jaw, but luckily, no brain trauma. Olivia underwent surgery that night in Hastings for about one and a half hours to repair the laceration on her forehead.
The next day, the hospital transferred the family to Lincoln to meet with a plastic surgeon/oral surgeon to repair the jaw fractures. On Monday morning, the surgeons put a plate in one side of Olivia’s jaw and wired her mouth shut.
“She had a rough day waking up from surgery and realizing that she could not open her mouth, but, today is a lot better and she is starting to act like the same old Olivia,” her mom thankfully states. “She will need to get all of her food through a syringe for at least the next two weeks, and, then, if her jaw fractures are healed the doctor will do one more surgery and remove the plate. We are just so thankful she did not get hurt worse than she did.”
Due to her injuries, the couple now believe that Olivia did not get kicked. Rather, they think she must have gone into the pen, climbed on the round bale and fell, hitting the bale feeder on her way down.
“I wish I had some advice on how to prevent this, but unfortunately it is nearly to impossible to watch kids every single minute especially when you are trying to take care of over 20 horses and 20 acres,” Brea says. “We are glad we have health insurance because you never know what might happen, and even though it is expensive, it is worth it when something like this happens.”
GoHorseShow is happy to report that Olivia went home from the hospital Wednesday, and we are thankful that she will fully recover from her injuries and wish her a speedy recovery!
