Our Story - Marsha Kedigh

At 2:50 a.m. I woke up and looked at the clock.  I realized Caanan was still on our bed.  I thought it odd you had not come home yet, but thought you were having a late time out with friends and went back to sleep.  The next thing I knew I heard your Dad say, “He’s at Vanderbilt?” “We are on our way.”  I got out of bed and the first thing I did was look at my trauma pager to find your trauma (pic1 pic2 pic3).  Your trauma was paged out at 2:48 a.m., it read: 20-25 y/o m, head on mx, multi.fractures, head injury, 80p, snoring resp.

When we arrived to the ED no one was saying much and the Administrative Coordinator escorted us up to the Trauma unit.  The first place they took us was to the “Family Conference room” then told us the Resident would be out to talk with us.  Dad and I were scared and in shock.  I kept thinking this is what is done when there is bad news.  Dr. Carpenter came in and started going over all of your injuries.  He was very kind and caring but he kept referring to your injuries in the past tense.  I finally had to stop him to ask if you were still alive, he said yes, he didn’t realize he was presenting you in the past tense.  We were able to go back and see you for just a few seconds.  You were still having trouble keeping your blood pressure up.  The Trauma team was still aggressively resuscitating you with – fluids, blood, and fresh frozen plasma to replenish the volume you lost with your femur and tibia/fibula fractures along with the liver laceration.  The next concern was your left foot.

Dr. Kregor, the orthopedic surgeon, came and talked to us about your fractures.  He showed us the films of your fractures – the first one he showed us was your right tibia, it looked bad but Dr. Kregor said this one was the least from the other two – the second one he showed was your femur, Dr. Kregor was right, the femur looked worse – then he showed us your left tibia, you had an approximate 2” gap from the fracture point to the top of the other end of the tibia.  Dr. Kregor was concerned about the left tibia because your left foot was dusky in color and had intermittent pulses.  The discussion at this point was whether Dr. Kregor would be able to save your foot.  You went into surgery to start the repair of your two lower legs at 7:10 a.m.  The surgery lasted approximately 4 hours.  Your friends started to arrive as soon as they got word of your accident.  I had called Christine around 6:00 a.m. and she left immediately from Chattanooga to come here.  She left word with your friends because I did not have any of their numbers.

After the surgery, Dr. Kregor spoke with Dad, Keaton, and me about the outcome.  Dr. Kregor was amazed and encouraged about the repairs.  Your right leg was completely repaired.  He nailed the two segmental ends of the tibia and got it approximately 3-4 degrees off from perfect alignment.  The left leg he stated that after he cleaned the wound on the bottom of your foot and cleaned the bone you tibia slid back into place with relative ease.  Blood flow went immediately to your foot and it was warm/pink to touch with a strong pulse.  He did say your ankle bone and your heel were crushed by the tibia coming through and that he would work on them later.

The seriousness of your condition hit us when we were told that the dispatch about the accident went out as a fatality at the scene and we were told they were talking about you.

I thank the Lord, my God and yours that He was with you and has kept you in his arms as your protector and healer.

Journal