Words by Brigid O’Connell, Herald Sun

First published in the Herald Sun on 18 February 2017

The damage under the skull was so great, the neurosurgeon assumed the unresponsive girl on the operating table before her had been catapulted from a car during a high-speed crash.

The four-year-old’s skull was not just fractured, but there was a blood clot — one of the most lethal of all head ­injuries — and bruising deep into the brain.

But it was a more innocuous set of circumstances that led to Kaylah Ezard being flown from her Broadford backyard to the Royal Children’s Hospital for emergency surgery.

Two days after Christmas Kaylah was playing with her sisters on their new enclosed trampoline, when she fell — most likely when turning around to zip up the net door — and landed head first on the concrete.

But, after five weeks in hospital and two surgeries to remove and later replace a palm-sized piece of skull, Kaylah has started kindergarten. She has amazed her parents, Ben and Hayley, with her progress.

“I couldn’t be happier. The hospital has done absolutely everything they could, and so now we’ve got our little girl back,” Ms Ezard said.

Since the accident, Mr Ezard has pored over the video on his phone showing his three daughters jumping.

He pauses the shots, backtracks and zooms in on a still showing their eldest child, six-year-old Mia, climbing out on to the mat, as she turns around to zip up the door.

He believes Kaylah must have got her heel caught on the mat’s platform at that moment and fallen backwards.

As a maintenance fitter, Mr Ezard has already designed, in his mind, the railed platform he would build around the trampoline so the girls could walk straight on to it, without risking falling from the ledge.

In previous years, RCH theatre staff were used to seeing kids with broken arms and wrists who had fallen from trampolines — with their arms stretched out to break the fall.

But head injuries from trampolines, either from falling backwards when getting out of netted trampolines or from clashes between multiple children bouncing inside, have become more common.

Last year, 74 children were admitted to the RCH with trampoline injuries.

“You wouldn’t expect something that brings so much joy to cause that much injury,” Ms Ezard said.

“You can’t take those safety features of the trampoline, like the net or ladder, for granted.

“Never take your eyes off them, even for a split second.”

It has been a long road home. For the first week, the pressure of her swollen brain on the optic nerve meant Kaylah could not see.

“It was horrible,” Ms Ezard said. “She was crying, ‘where are you, Mummy? Where are you?’.”

Over the next few days, around New Year’s Eve, Kaylah started seeing colours and then shapes, before her full sight returned.

Next she could wriggle her left fingers. A day later she could move her arm.

Kaylah spent a month in a helmet while a piece of skull was removed last month, by neurosurgeon Wirginia Maixner, to give her swollen and injured brain time to heal.

Kaylah will continue to be monitored for the effect the brain injury had on her leg muscle tone.

Now back at home — without her helmet or neck brace — Kaylah knows the trampoline is out of bounds for her.

She begs her sisters not to play on it without her.

“She tells them it isn’t fair for her,” Ms Ezard said.

“We tend to let them go on it when she isn’t around.

“But just one at a time.

“But no one can tell her she can’t do something.

“She’s too determined and that’s why she’ll be fine.”