Hit and run victim faces new challenge

Aaron Horsley was supposed to have gotten an extended reprieve from his hospital room, but only days after the victim of an October hit and run accident returned home to Hesperia, he was heading back to Loma Linda University Medical Center by ambulance.

Horsley, 17, had been dragged beneath a pick-up truck for a block after another motorist struck him on October 10.

On November 20, "he had to be ambulanced back to Loma Linda," Horsley's mother Marilyn said Tuesday. "He developed a deathly staph infection. It's one of the deadliest ones there is."

Specifically, Horsley was infected with a breed of Klebsiella bacteria.

"It's gone to his back and his spine and it's even gone into his hip bone."

Doctors at Loma Linda were only able to find a single antibiotic that would work on the strain.

"The antibiotic is extremely toxic" and causes him pain whenever it's administered, his mother said. Horsley now is now getting additional painkillers to deal with the affects of the antibiotic. "He's got to be on this antibiotic for the next four to six weeks."

Horsley made the most of the four days he was out of the hospital.

"He went to the football game that Friday and his friends had a party for him. So he had a good time, but it just went downhill from there."

It hasn't been all bad news, however: Horsley, who is paralyzed from mid-thigh down after his accident, can now wiggle his toes, although he does not yet have feeling in them.

"You get great news and then you get hit in the head," Marilyn Horsley said.

Horsley should be released from the hospital in early December.

Beau Yarbrough can be reached at 956-7108 or at beau@hesperiastar.com.