Sep. 27--In two days, it will be two years since the afternoon Beverly Murphy wishes she could wipe from her memory.

She knows she never will. She'll always remember the garage sale gone wrong -- the car that backed from the driveway of her St. Joseph home and ran over her grandson, dragging him 10 feet before the driver stopped. By that time, 2-year-old Drennan Gwinn had blood all over, broken bones in his back and a skull fracture that left fragments in his brain. He was rushed to Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, where doctors gave his parents little hope he'd survive.

And by the odds, he shouldn't have. But it isn't at all unbelievable to his grandmother that he did.

"For himself -- being Drennan -- no, I'm not surprised," she says. "Medically, yes. Medically, I'm amazed."

And so is everyone else who's witnessed how far Drennan's come. Not only has he survived, he's learned to walk and talk again and had his final scheduled surgery Aug. 25 -- one that replaced a missing 7-by-10-centimeter piece of his skull with an acrylic implant, allowing him to finally be free of the helmet that protected his head until his skull was close enough to full-grown to undergo the procedure.

Before the implant, all that covered that portion of Drennan's brain was fluid, which made his head feel like a water balloon, says his mother, Stephanie Gwinn. After the implant, she adds, "It was so exciting to feel his head -- his perfect little hard head he hasn't had for almost two years."

This surgery was the grand finale in a series of surgeries too numerous for her to number. One removed "debris" skin from the right side of Drennan's face, and another took skin from his leg as a temporary replacement for what he'd lost. Still others put tissue expanders in his face to help him form extra skin, causing balloons to grow from his cheek and forehead. And then there was all the therapy to help him re-learn to use his left side and to be able to speak again.

When he first started coming to the Rehabilitation Institute of Kansas City, Drennan needed assistance to sit up, roll over and walk more than a few steps, says his physical therapist, Lynne Mersch. But he can do all these things on his own now and shows a lot of potential for continued progress, she adds -- something she attributes to his family's support and simply to the way Drennan's wired.

"He's just such a happy-go-lucky kid," she says. "He's persistent and he likes to be independent, and he always comes in with a great big smile on."

Despite how far he's come, his journey isn't over. Now just shy of his fifth birthday, Drennan still goes to therapy on days he doesn't have preschool. He still "runs with lefty (his left arm) flopping in the wind," Stephanie says, and wears braces on his left hand and lower leg, which he can't control without great effort. He still wears diapers -- something Stephanie thinks could be a developmental delay due to the brain damage he suffered. And he's still waiting for his surgery scars to heal.

But none of this matters much, because Drennan is still here, and he's still Drennan.

He still loves cars -- all cars -- but especially Lightning McQueen from the movie "Cars." Running around his living room just more than a week after his last surgery, he pauses to make the announcement, "I don't need my helmet anymore. I have this hat."

It's a bright red baseball cap his cousins gave him -- one featuring Lightning McQueen, of course. With it on, his scars are hardly noticeable, and he looks like any other boy playing with small plastic dinosaurs (a distant second when it comes to favorite toys). He laughs all the time in the infectious giggle he's famous for, alternately running to the back door to let the dog into the house (a no-no) and being a little rough with his older brothers (another no-no).

He doesn't seem like someone who's just had major surgery, but then again, he never has -- not after any of his surgeries, not even right after his accident.

"I don't remember him ever complaining of anything hurting," Stephanie says (Although, she admits, Drennan did complain about a tiny cut on his finger a few days after his last surgery -- even though he didn't say anything about the much larger cuts on his head). "He makes us think we should never complain about anything, because he's so strong."

Not only is he still Drennan, he still looks like Drennan -- something Stephanie wasn't sure in the beginning would ever be the case. A frame hanging over her living room sofa holds a photo of him taken just days before the accident, and it's been so hard over the past two years to not look at it all the time, she says -- remembering how he was before.

Of course, even as Drennan heals, life will never be exactly as it was before -- not with all he and his family have been through, not with how it's changed them. But his mom knows this isn't all bad.

"I know it's only going to get better from here," she says, "and I know he's a miracle, for sure. He's strong, and I know he's made me stronger."

Lifestyles reporter Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.

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