Trauma survivors gather for lunch

Annie Flanzraich

Thursday, May 19, 2005 | 10:02 a.m.

Shiloh Edsitty was happy to get out of school for a day to attend a trauma survivor's luncheon at University Medical Center. It meant he didn't have to do homework.

"I like to see people and not sit at home and do school work," the 13-year-old boy said at the event Wednesday.

And Cathy Milton, a child life specialist at UMC who counseled Shiloh during his three-week hospital stay, was even happier he had homework and school to skip.

"It's amazing to see him talking about school and girlfriends," Milton said. "It's just so cool to see he was able to live his life and carry on."

Shiloh and his mother, Teresa Tilden, were attacked in their apartment on Warm Springs Road near Eastern Avenue in November. Police believe Tilden's boyfriend, James Valdez, killed Tilden and then stabbed Shiloh, leaving a 10-inch butcher knife stuck in his chest.

Shiloh suffered a sliced carotid artery, severed liver, punctured intestine and had to have his gall bladder removed.

But at the luncheon he was munching on dinner rolls like any other 13-year-old. He was hungry from the long drive he and his guardian, Vivian Powell, took from Salt Lake City to be at the event.

Shiloh was one of the 16 survivors who attended the luncheon in UMC's School of Medicine Building. And those are 16 survivors out of the approximately 11,600 trauma victims UMC treats a year, Cheryl Persinger, public relations manger for UMC, said.

The event has been held for the past eight years during May to honor survivors during national trauma awareness month. About 70 people came to this year's luncheon.

One of them was Roger Galloway, a 57-year-old Lake Havasu City, Ariz., resident. In March of 2004, while making a routine drive from Los Angeles to Lake Havasu in his convertible, he was thrown 65 feet in front his car when it spun out of control. He was unconscious for six weeks, his left arm was crushed and he suffered severe trauma.

Persinger said the luncheon helped survivors like Galloway reconnect with the doctors and nurses who saved their lives.

"It helps the staff see what their hard works does," Persinger said. "Why they do this day in and day out."

Dr. John Fildes, head of trauma at UMC, said the survivors at the lunch beat the odds.

"Those patients were in danger of losing their lives and each of them have a miracle story to tell," Fildes said.