Inbound from Massachusetts, the Arrowsmith family was within minutes of home when a car filled with teenagers blew a stop sign at Wakefield.
The impact sent the Arrowsmith van reeling into a telephone pole and massively shattered 3-year-old Jonny's skull.
It was four days before Christmas 2003.
The young man who caused the wreck was high on marijuana. He's now in jail.
Jonny suffered severe brain injury and was airlifted to Christiana Hospital in Delaware.
The boy had just been starting to talk and follow his dad around their 140-acre dairy farm in Fulton Township.
Three years later, Jonny absorbs the world through serene, blue eyes. His expression remains passive.
His parents, Tom and Mandy Arrowsmith, say he has slowly become more comfortable and responsive, thanks in large part to alternative therapies.
"They say all brain injuries are different," says Mrs. Arrowsmith, who suffered a broken wrist in the accident. Jonny cannot run, walk or speak, and the couple cannot say when, or if, he will.
But they want to give him every chance they can to improve.
And so, in May, Jonny will go to China for six infusions of stem cells harvested from donated umbilical cord blood.
The procedure is still out on the frontier of medicine. It is not performed in the United States, Mrs. Arrowsmith said.
Nor is the $35,000 cost covered by insurance. A fundraising auction will be held May 5, and several additional events have been scheduled (please see related story).
At the Arrowsmith farmhouse Thursday, nurse Gina Marrone gently pressured Jonny's neck, an "Advanced Biomechanical Rehabilitation" technique designed to relax the smooth muscles in his body.
Jonny's young sisters and brother darted in and out.
Dressed in trousers and a checkered shirt, the 6½-year-old boy lay quietly, his eyes swiveled away.
His rehabilitation is painstaking, his family says, but it's also a race against time.
"Every year he has a birthday," Mrs. Arrowsmith said, "that's a year he doesn't get to play."
Miracle harvest?The Arrowsmiths expect no miracles. But, they say, they've already experienced several.
One ongoing event is the generous help of family, friends and community. The first was Jonny's survival.
Those first days after the accident, Tom Arrowsmith said, "We were basically at the point where they said we should pull the plug."
But Jonny twice came out of comas induced by doctors.
By Jan. 12, 2004, he was able to breathe on his own.
"We started getting smiles in February," Mrs. Arrowsmith said, "but he still couldn't squeeze your hand."
In the years since, seizures have at times stiffened the boy's body board hard and sent his heart rate soaring. A device that pumps muscle relaxant was implanted near his hip.
"His [nerve] signals are getting totally scrambled," said Tom Arrowsmith, 38.
Still, Jonny's 36-year-old mother said she believes that he is inside, fighting to get out. "We feel he knows everything that goes on."
To speed his progress, the couple have pursued alternative therapies such as placing Johnny in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at a clinic in Columbia.
From late 2004 to early 2006, Jonny underwent periodic treatment at the Philadelphia-based Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential.
They've written their own books for the boy, who lights up over toy cars and likes the story of "Alice in Wonderland."
Last year, they introduced Jonny to Advanced Biomechanical Rehabilitation, a series of passive exercises developed by a doctor in Belgium.
When the couple's youngest child, Nicole, was born two years ago, they saved her umbilical cord blood, thinking it might some day help Jonny.
It was at an ABR session this past February in Toronto that another parent told Mrs. Arrowsmith about foreign stem cell therapy.
She initially researched a clinic in Mexico before opting for Beike Biotech, a company that coordinates stem cell procedures at several hospitals in China.
Chinese doctors have been transplanting stem cells for two years, according to Mrs. Arrowsmith, who said she found reviews of their work to be uniformly positive.
At least half a dozen families from all over the United States have gone to China for treatment, she said.
Mrs. Arrowsmith plans to travel to Hangzhou, China, with Jonny and a nurse who worked for the family previously. Tom Arrowsmith will remain on the farm with Nicole and the couple's two other children, Caroline, 5, and Alex, 3½.
Doctors will inject stem cells intravenously into Jonny's blood and also into his spinal cord fluid over a period of about a month.
Stem cells can specialize and become many different kinds of cells.
According to Beike Biotech, transplants are especially effective for treating spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis and and cerebral palsy.
The company says it harvests about 300,000 stem cells from each donated umbilical cord. The cells are then isolated and combined with chemical "growth factors" that cause them to multiply until there are enough for an infusion.
Through it all, Mrs. Arrowsmith said, "We'll stay right in the hospital with Jonny."
They are scheduled to come home in early July.
Then, the family's task will be to keep the boy free of fever for two months.
Mrs. Arrowsmith said Chinese stem cell transplants have worked out so well for two other families that they're returning for more therapy.
She intends to persevere with any and all treatments that might help her son.
"We've had parents tell us 'Don't give up. Our child started talking seven months later.' "
Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.
