Of the eight people in the Suburban, I was the only one who was admitted to the ICU. We had gone out to dinner with three other couples and were returning home on a beautiful summer evening. The Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight that T-boned us was driven by a teenage girl with a new learner’s permit. She mistook the gas pedal for the brake and panicked when the heavy car wouldn’t stop. Pedal to the metal, the big Olds V-8 carried her and her screaming passenger right through the stop sign and into us, then she ricochetted off and ran head-on into a large pine tree, where she continued to stand on the gas pedal and dug both rear wheels down right into the ground. Both cars and the pine tree were totaled, Lynn was sitting next to me and broke eight ribs, the screaming driver’s passenger needed a splenectomy and I was admitted for evaluation of a concussive head injury. Dr. Farrel Hansen was in the Riverview ER and sewed my right ear back on. I recall going back and forth between Riverview and Parkview Hospitals for X-Rays and CT scans. (Parkview Hospital had the CT scanner and Riverview Hospital had the ICU.) As I became more alert, a left brachial plexus injury became obvious. Dr. Steve Austin took me down to radiology and found that I had an unstable cervical spine, without fracture. He told me that I had a subluxation of C5 over C6—a few torque pounds more and I would have had a spinal cord injury, possibly quadriplegic. Despite these findings, I had been most fortunate. I woke up alive.
A day or so after coming out of the ICU, an insurance adjuster called to ask how I was doing. I glibly replied that I was a young surgeon in cervical traction, with a concussive head injury and a numb left arm and hand and otherwise was fine, lucky to be alive. I returned to work in one month and wore a Somogyi brace for the next three months. The picture here is of a smiling, young model with hair, wearing a modern Minerva Halo Orthosis. 40 years ago, mine was bulkier, made of metal with cloth pads and leather straps, and I was not smiling.
It could have been worse--much worse. Those patients with unstable cervical fractures require a HALO device--at that time involving a fiberglass chest frame attached to long metal rods that support a metal ring around the top of the skull with pointed screws placed into the bone to prevent any neck movement. Mine had no skull screws, but I was similarly immobilized and wore it 24/7 for most of a long hot summer. I was about the age of this guy and looked much the same.
As I recovered at home, I wondered if everything was working normally. MK and I had wanted another child, and we decided it was time to get on with our family and did not let the presence of a Somogyi Orthosis get in the way—after all I was a board-certified urologist and had helped many others overcome difficulties to become parents. To this day, the child that resulted remains uncomfortable discussing the circumstances of his conception. Let’s just say that it was a bracing experience and one of my proudest moments.
After all the dust settled, it came time to deal with the insurance agent. Our comparative values, according to the letter from Northwest Mutual, ruined my self-image for months. MK had turned her ankles during the wreck and quickly returned to normal. As she read the insurance settlement papers to me one afternoon, she told me that she was awarded $500 for missing my loving companionship, called loss of consortium. MK's smile broadened, not about the amount of money, but about the estimated valuation difference. My award, for missing her loving companionship, was $10,000. We were both in the same consortium, yet her value was twenty times greater than mine. MK often reminds me of this.
Ever vigilant,
RT
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