Men’s league hockey player suffers horrific injury: ‘Eye basically exploded'

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If there are any hockey players out there who think they’re too cool to wear a face mask, this is a reminder that your life can change in the blink of an eye.

It’s what happened during a men’s league hockey game in Washington last month to Russel Del Gesso, who was the victim of a freak accident on the ice.

As his fiancee Liz Brown detailed to People, Del Gesso was competing when a shot was tipped and the puck flew up underneath his visor and struck him directly in his right eyeball.

Brown, who was watching in the crowd with her kids and parents, saw Del Gesso grab his face as blood dripped onto the ice.

She told the outlet that she had her parents take the kids home before meeting Del Gesso in the locker room, assessing the damage and taking him to a nearby emergency room.

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Since the medical facility in Richland, Wash., a town of roughly 60,000 in the southern portion of the state where they live, didn’t have an ophthalmology department, the couple were forced to wait in the emergency area.

“One of the nurses said ‘time is tissue’ when it comes to an eyeball injury,” Brown told People. “They said everything brain-wise looked good, but the eyeball ruptured. There’s no ophthalmology department anywhere closer than either Spokane or Seattle. Spokane is about two and a half hours away. Seattle is three and a half hours away.

“Spokane wouldn’t take it, they said it’s too severe for us. We were transferred to Seattle, and they wanted to LifeFlight him because, at this point, they had told us the first 24 hours are really critical.”

But the distance to Seattle only was the first obstacle: Due to a storm in the area, LifeFlight couldn’t get flight path clearance and a mountain pass also would make travel by ambulance difficult.

“We can either wait for an ambulance and wait out the storm, or you can take him. So I said, ‘Well, I’m going to take him. I’m not going to sit here and wait,'” Brown recalls. “Somebody’s just told me ‘time is tissue.'”

Brown’s father joined the couple for the trip, which began at 11 p.m. and was “fuelled by energy drinks.”

“We got to Seattle, checked in there, and got seen by the amazing ophthalmologist. She did tests to determine the severity of the damage, said it’s ruptured, and confirmed nothing’s wrong with the brain,” Brown said.

“They took him into surgery and they told me it was going to be about three to four hours … they came out in about two hours and the doctor said that he was able to reshape the eye and put the eyeball back together, which was absolutely shocking.”

Del Gesso wasn’t out of the woods yet, though. While the first surgery was about “damage control,” he would have to return for further surgery to reattach the retina.

According to an update shared on TikTok by Brown, the doctor was able to successfully reattach the retina, even though the odds were just 50%.

Now, they play the waiting game to see how much of Del Gesso’s vision returns in his eye, but he hasn’t let the freak accident get him down.

“He’s very tough and strong, and he’s definitely got this mindset that, ‘It is what it is. It happened. I can’t just sit around and mope and be sad about it. I’m going to do everything I can to make it better.’ He even said, ‘It’s just another big challenge to overcome,'” Brown said.

“It will be a long road. It’ll be tough, but he’s strong, and he’ll make life happen regardless. He’s not a person to let something like that get him down.”