His sickle cell anemia Tennessee mother is about to return to the United States after being injured in an unusual accident while swimming with dolphins in Jamaica.
Cierra Stockard was swimming with a calm sea creature during spring break, when one of the animals lifted her into the air, she collapsed and landed on the dolphin's dorsal fin, she told Nashville's story wkrn. She was then taken to a local hospital in Montego Bay.
“I felt like I was involved in a car accident,” the mother of the two said in a telephone interview with WKRN, a hospital in Jamaican. “The power – it felt like a boom! Something really bad happened. I just hurt so much. Tears were running down my face.”
“The Trauma of Blunt Power” left a serious bruise on the stockard, the size of “three apples,” her sister wrote in Gofundme.
Stockard, who remains with his family in Jamaica, received emergency surgery and two blood transfusions, but it is unclear when and when he will be able to return home.
The family is about to raise $55,000 to get her back to America.
Stockard may require a third blood transfusion due to her illness and uses “drugs from home” to manage sickle cell disease, but “I can't manage everything myself,” her sister Nevae Garton wrote in an online fundraiser.
“This isn't a good situation, so we need her home,” Stockard's aunt, Kimberley Watkins, told WRKN.
“We tried to contact the embassy,” Watkins added. “Basically, they can oversee us. I'm not going to say they weren't help, but we're doing things ourselves.”
