Valley boy needs surgery after freak paintball accident
EL MIRAGE, Ariz. (FOX 10) - "It's me thinking my son was going to go out, just to have a good time," Lisa Cortez said. "Me letting him go out for a couple hours with a friend to enjoy himself and him coming back with this, never thinking that this is what I was gonna go through later on."
Lisa Cortez never expected her son to get hurt while paintballing at a birthday party last month, but 14-year-old Jose Valenzuela says he's still traumatized by the moment a paintball hit him on the left side of his head.
"When I got hit on the head, I fell to the ground, I said, 'ow,' well multiple times," he said.
Cortez says the swelling went down within days, but two weeks ago Jose combed his hair and felt a lump.
"If you hold your hand onto it, you can feel it pulsing, it has a pulse to it," she said.
Panicking, Cortez took her son to get an ultrasound done. Then, she says a vascular surgeon diagnosed Jose with an aneurysm.
Now, he needs surgery on the main artery in his head.
"She just says we can't wait any longer because if something happens or it keeps on expanding it can burst. He'll bleed, it can be fatal," Cortez said.
Cortez warns parents to stay aware of head injuries and don't hesitate to call a doctor.
"Don't ignore it, please pay attention, call your doctor, get it checked out cause it could be something worse than just a little bump in their head," she said.