HAMILTON, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) – A high school senior who has been farming his entire life survived a near-fatal farming accident that left him with horrendous burns and without an arm.
Braycin Parrish, 17, is recovering from injuries doctors say are the worst they have ever seen someone survive.
The farmer was injured on Oct. 2 while harvesting peanuts when the buggy on his tractor came in contact with an electrical line, shocking him and setting his body on fire.
“He was dead. For how many minutes? Only God knows,” his dad Blain Parrish said.
Farming is something that’s in the blood of the hardworking 17-year-old.
“I started riding around with my dad when I was not much older than 2,” Braycin said. “Did just about everything, anything, tractors, cattle.”
Braycin said he loves farming and the hard work that comes along with it.
“I don’t know it any other way,” Braycin said. “I don’t get up every day and want to go play football. I don’t foresee that being fun at all. I see working and making money and being ahead to be better, in my opinion.”
That is exactly what Braycin was doing when a typical workday turned into a nightmare.
“I went and got on the tractor and went to dump it in the semi-trailer, and I guess there was a high line above it, and I went to dump it over, and the buggy caught on fire and caught the tires on fire. So I got out and was going to unhook the buggy from the tractor, and it was under electricity, and I touched it and so it lit me up,” Braycin said.
It’s the last thing he remembers.
Braycin’s boss was the only person nearby when it happened. He found Braycin face down in the dirt, surrounded by fire and not breathing.
Braycin’s boss started CPR, called 911 and made a frantic call to his dad, who was 45 minutes away working at a sale barn.
“He calls me and he’s screaming,” Blain Parrish said. “I run outside because he never screams. He’s a quiet guy, and he’s screaming, and then he goes to tell me, he said, ‘He’s alive. It’s not good.’”
He added, “When he said, ‘There’s a big hole in him,’ I gave that pickup all she’d do.”
Braycin’s boss got the teen breathing again. When his dad arrived, Braycin was being loaded into a medical helicopter.
“You hear about it and see it on TV and stuff, but it’s a whole different thing when it’s your kid laying there,” Blain Parrish said.
Braycin was flown to the burn center at Parkland Health in Dallas, where he underwent multiple surgeries to save his life.
Braycin experienced third-degree burns on over 60% of his body, and his left arm was burned down to the bone.
“It was all the way to the bone. Bone was black,” his dad said. “It looked like a hotdog that you left on there for four days at 500 degrees. The bone was even black.”
Doctors removed Braycin’s left arm to save his life.
“There were two of them that sat right here in this office and said, ‘We’ve been here over 20 years and we’ve never seen anybody have a burn that bad or a blow out that bad that lived,” Blain Parrish said.
Braycin underwent multiple surgeries in the days following the accident.
He remained unresponsive until the seventh day in a moment his dad and stepmom, Brandi, who is a nurse, caught on video.
“I Never Lie” by Zach Top played in Braycin’s hospital room and he began to make the motions of strumming along.
“We’re all sitting there talking and they were working on him, and Brandi said, ‘Look.’ He started doing this with his hand, and then I looked back and his feet are tapping along, too,” Blain Parrish said.
Braycin doesn’t remember the moment but enjoys watching the playback.
“It makes me tear up,” he said. “I think it’s pretty cool that I recognized it, even though I wasn’t really there, and I don’t remember it now.”
Top watched the now-viral video of Braycin waking up to his song and sent a care package with autographed merchandise.
Braycin has worked overtime to recover.
Despite being burned from the top of his head to his feet, where he also lost three toes, Braycin tells nurses his pain level is “maybe a four.”
“I don’t know anybody any tougher, and I know lots of people,” his dad said.
Braycin said he couldn’t have made it without the support of his family.
Braycin says as soon as he gets out, he has one plan: to get back on the tractor.
“I may have to change the way I do it or it may be a little slower, but I’ll get it done, and I’ll learn how to make it faster if I need to,” Braycin said.
He said God was watching over him.
“God was there watching over me. If not, I think I would have been worse without God. Yeah, I don’t think I’d be alive without him,” he said.
Braycin still has more surgeries planned, but he is weeks ahead of recovery expectations. He is scheduled to be released from the hospital on Friday.
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