During my two weeks on Neurosurgery last year, I walked into the operating room and discovered that the trauma patient that everybody had been talking about in rounds was somebody that I knew extremely well, from my hometown of 250 people. She was one of my mom’s good friends and her granddaughter is one of the few people that I count as a friend from high school. She had been in an accident and had broken her back. Needless to say, that surgery is one of my most memorable–and not in a good way.

Because I was on service, I had the opportunity to visit with her on a daily basis, until she was moved to the rehab ward. Most of the time, I didn’t do much more than hold her hand while she slept and even that was hard. I wanted to do so much more and was powerless. I couldn’t offer words of encouragement–we as her care team had no idea if she would get any movement back, no idea how much surgery she’d require, no idea when the pain would start to dissapate–and even though I wanted to say everything was going to be okay, I couldn’t. She’s had a hard recovery. She can walk now with the assistance of a walker, but it is very tiring and the numbness has never left her legs. She fights with depression on a daily basis now, wondering why she survived. It’s hard watching her go through this trial–this once happy, vibrant lady.

All this has been in my head this week as my friend lies in the hospital for a very similar reason. I haven’t been up to see him yet, partially to give him time to heal, partially to give myself time. Becuase, and I hope this doesn’t sound selfish, although I don’t have any idea how hard it is for the person who ahs been through a traumatic event, it’s difficult being the relative/friend and finding the right words of support. As I’ve mentioned before, I have gotten to the point that I can relate to patients and share in their grief–but when it affects someone I know, I become useless again.

He’s doing a little better in terms of his spirits. We held a meeting on Tuesday to try to come up with ways to help with his medical costs, personal needs, and to help find ways for him to finish school. I’m now on a committee trying to come up with fundraising ideas–something that, as always, has turned out to be more difficult than intended. We had thought that we would pull all of our frequent flyer miles together to get his family here–but Delta airlines is a business and is charging $50 to transfer the miles–plus 50 cents for every mile, and they won’t waive it. We’ve gotten the local media available.

Anyway, I really do appreciate the words of support that you all have offered. I thought some of you might be interested in reading some of the articles that have appeared in the local newspaper.
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3583898
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635190427,00.html
http://umed.med.utah.edu/ms4/gael/Gael%20letter.doc

And I know none of you know him at all, but if you wanted to donate something to his cause, email me and we can talk. 🙂 No pressure really.

I’ll do another post later about things going on in my life (and there are a few things), but I’m pretty bad at updating on things I’ve written about in the past and thought this might be of interest.