Thomas shown recovering after impaling his eye socket with a pencil. Photo / Facebook
Warning: Distressing content.
An Australian mother has shared a frightening ordeal that saw her young son lodge a pencil inside his eye.
Thomas Skrzypinski, who was 14-months-old at the time, had just learned to walk, the Courier Mail reports.
However, on November 26, 2016 when celebrating an early Christmas with his extended family in the Gold Coast, the toddler wandered off and tripped over with a pencil in his mouth.
The toddler's mother, Bri Skrzypinski, recalled the horrific event during a visit to Mudgeeraba ambulance station yesterday as she thanked the paramedics for saving her son's life.
She said awhile after he wandered off, she heard her son scream from the other room and ran to find Thomas covered in blood.
The pencil lodged itself in his top palate and went in so deep that it fractured Thomas' eye socket.
In a harrowing 000 call released on Tuesday, Skrzypinski can be heard telling paramedics what happened and pleading for help on what to do.
"We cannot get it out, it's jammed. What can we do? It's bleeding so badly, we can't stop the bleeding," she told the first responder on the other end of the line.
What followed after the incident has been described as "any parent's worst nightmare" Skrzypinski said.
"The initial reaction was shock, and then you go into that mode of protectiveness.
"I knew [the paramedics] were on their way so that was more calming than anything."
She sang her song's favourite song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, in a bid to calm her hysterical toddler as they waited for paramedics.
She then heard the sirens outside her house, which she said sounded "like magic".
Paramedics Adrianna Barnes and Clint Peters treated Thomas at the scene before rushing him to hospital, where the young boy underwent emergency surgery for two hours to remove the pencil.
The mother revealed the ordeal could have been a lot worse as the pencil narrowly missed Thomas' brain "just millimetres" from his optical nerve.
Had the nerve been damaged, Thomas may have lost part or all of his vision.
He stayed in hospital for five days after the operation before being discharged and beginning his road to full recovery.
Skrzypinski said her son, now 3, was "really well" since the freak accident.
"He needs to wear glasses but that is a great outcome considering," she told Yahoo News Australia.
Cardinals tasked with choosing a new pope have begun a second day of voting inside.