Saving grace: Trauma victims reunited with those who helped them through darkest hours

Thursday, May 23, 2002 | 11:13 a.m.

Grown men cried on Wednesday morning at University Medical Center.

A woman who once wasn't supposed to walk stood at a microphone.

Men of science spoke of God, and strangers embraced.

The occasion? At least a dozen men and women who were once on the brink of death were reunited with the people who saved their lives at the hospital where they were brought in their darkest hours.

There were survivors of drunken drivers, gun-wielding former boyfriends and snarling Great Danes, together with surgeons, nurses and social workers.

The hospital -- site of the only Level I Trauma Center in a 10,000-square-mile area covering Nevada and parts of California, Arizona and Utah -- holds the unusual reunion once a year.

This year the reunion came with the backdrop of a medical malpractice insurance crisis that has threatened the center with the loss of surgeons, who say they can no longer afford to practice the high-risk specialty in Nevada.

Two of nine surgeons at the center have given notice that they may leave the hospital in 60 to 90 days if a solution isn't found, John Ellerton, chief of staff for the hospital, said.

"They're doing an incredible job here, and it saddens me that this might be in jeopardy," he said.

That job was recognized by the event, which brought the healed and healers together over lunch and thankfulness.

It allowed social worker Donna Hall to see former patient Diane Norte conscious for the first time. Norte had been shot by a former boyfriend in July 2001 and spent eight weeks at the trauma center.

It gave wheelchair-ridden Daniel Stanford a chance to review all that he missed while in a coma for two months with his doctor, John Fildes, who is also director of the trauma center.

Everybody from family members of former patients to doctors spoke of the intangibles -- faith and God.

Fildes recalled the night Stanford was brought into the center. It was early March 2001, and the doctor had gone home for a few hours' rest after being on his feet more than 24 hours straight. Stanford, only 22, was hit by a drunken driver doing more than 100 miles an hour; he was driving 35 mph.

Stanford was rushed to an already full center. Fildes was called in from his rest.

The surgeon began making the sorts of decisions he and his staff make daily in order to keep hope alive for the 11,439 patients they treated last year.

"We put him on a breathing machine. I put a tube in the abdomen and saw there was internal bleeding. We also were seeing there was no pulse in the feet, fresh burns and the possibility of brain damage," Fildes said.

They removed his spleen and repaired an aorta immediately.

"You just have to keep hunting for injuries that could take the person's life quickly," he said.

Stanford woke up 60 days later thinking it was the next day. His next thought, he said, was that his Dad was going to kill him for wrecking the truck. Then he noticed he had no right arm.

"This was another tough decision," Fildes said. "But he got gangrene several days after the accident, and so I said to his Dad -- 'Either he lives the rest of his life with one arm, or you bury him with two.' "

Stanford said that the staff of the trauma center became as close as his family during the time he was there.

"As much as they try not to get close to you -- because they know they could lose you -- they do," he said.

Fildes agreed.

"Still, it's hard. One of our residents who I was training would say every day, 'It's a slam dunk, we're going to save Daniel.' And I would tell her, 'No, we're going to try to save Daniel. The rest is in the hands of God.' "