INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - Playing basketball used to come easily for Dayton Minor. But after losing all of the fingers on his right hand in a fireworks accident, Dayton has had to make some difficult changes for an active 10-year old.
"It was underneath the car," Dayton said as he described finding the firework in his driveway last August. He says he got a lighter and his older brother says before he could stop him, Dayton had set the firework off.
"I said, 'Dayton, stop!' and I couldn't get it out," remembers Dayton's brother, Nicholas.
Dayton says he simply went numb.
"Like, it just like immediately just blew up and like I couldn't like feel anything like at all," he said.
Dayton's mom heard it happen. And what she saw next was terrifying for any parent.
"It looked like something from a war movie," Maggie Minor said.
At the same time, Nicholas was trying to help.
"Dayton turned around and he was starting to cry and he had a big hole in his shorts and his hand was just covered in blood," he said.
As shocked as his family was, Dayton still felt little pain at the time.
"When they laid me down, I still couldn't feel anything," he said.
He was flown by helicopter to Riley Hospital for Children, where Dayton underwent surgery and spent the next 10 days. Since then, he has endured countless follow-up visits to the hospital and months of healing.
He also has had to learn to be left-handed.
"It was really, really hard, but now that I've done it a lot, it's actually really easy and it only took me like a week to get used to it," said Dayton.
What's taking longer to adapt to, though, is a difficult decision that's sidelined Dayton for the entire summer and added several more months to his healing.
"I had a hard time making this decision. Do we do it? Do we not?" Maggie said.
She decided an unusual medical move would ultimately improve Dayton's life. So in May, doctors removed the big toe on Dayton's left foot and attached it to his right hand to act as a thumb.
Dayton will have two more surgeries where doctors will remove two toes from Dayton's right foot and attach them to his right hand, too.
"I didn't want to do it at all," Dayton said, "But my mom keeps saying it's going to be easier when you're older."
"It's going to at least give him function of that hand to where he can live a normal everyday life," Maggie said.
For now, though, normal is hard for a 10-year old spending his summer in a wheelchair as he heals from the removal of his toe.
"It kind of stinks, like, watching everybody play and stuff," Dayton said.
He's spending his time making YouTube videos with his brother.
Dayton now wants other people to know what happened to him and he has a warning about fireworks.
"Tell 'em not to do it and they can get really hurt," he said.
