UMC honors trauma survivors

Hospital holds luncheon to celebrate life, share stories

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The banquet room at UMC was filled with survivors, each with a story about the facility's trauma unit and the care they received there.

The recent event was officially called the annual Trauma Survivors Luncheon.

North Las Vegas firefighter Rafael Gomez was collecting muscular dystrophy donations on a corner of Cheyenne in September 2005, when a car barrelled through the intersection and ran over him.

He remembers nothing of the accident but does recall a dream he had while unconscious.

"In this dream, my wife and one of my sons told me I was in the hospital and not doing well," he said. "But I told them, 'No, I'm fine.' And that's when I woke up."

He'd been in the hospital more than a month after having been brought to UMC's trauma unit.

"I'm used to dropping people off here, not being one of their patients," he said.

Ramond Sandoval, a forklift operator, was in a neighborhood bar when an armed robber began shooting.

One bullet hit Sandoval in the neck and caused him to slump to the floor, blood spurting from his carotid artery.

"I saw him on the floor bleeding and I just knew I had to stop it (the bleeding)," said his girlfriend of 10 years, Barbara Morancy. "I grabbed my purse, thinking that was going to stop it. Then I realized what I was doing and grabbed a towel instead. To this day, I don't know why I thought using my purse was going to help anything."

Sandoval lost at least two pints of blood and he "flat-lined a couple of times," Morancy said. "The nurses, they were the best. If a monitor went off, they were right on it."

Jennifer Hazlett, 19, was driving with her brother Shawn, 17, who was a passenger when they were hit by another vehicle.

They were in a Honda Accord. The other driver was in an 18-wheeler.

"I saw it coming at us and I yelled, 'Brace yourself,' " Shawn said.

He didn't recall much else because he was knocked unconscious.

His injuries included broken ribs, a punctured lung, a ruptured spleen and head trauma.

"He ended up dying at the scene," said Angela Sharron, the teens' mother. "But there was a volunteer nurse with the fire fighters and they got him revived."

Shawn also almost died while on the operating table.

Jennifer received specialized care as well. She was 24 weeks pregnant at the time and had suffered five broken ribs, kidney and spleen damage and a head injury.

Both were medicated to keep them in a state of sleep while their bodies healed.

"It was very touch and go for a while," Sharron said. "I've lived here a long time and back then, UMC used to be known as the 'death hospital.' When I first heard they were taken there, I didn't even know it had a trauma center. But I was so impressed."

Sharron praised the trauma unit for saving her children's lives and the nurses for keeping her abreast of their condition.

When the hospital was in its fledgling stage, the trauma unit had only one bay and one bed. Now it's ranked as one of the top five trauma units in the country.

Part of serving the community requires keeping up with technology.

UMC underwent some updates after the first of the year and now sports a new CAT scan suite, with 3-D color imaging, and an angiography suite.

In the angiography area, the sleek, stylized C shape of the scanner fits onto an overhead track to travel the length of a prone patient.

"It's wonderful to get the images so fast and see them so clear," said Dr. John Fildes, who heads the trauma department. "I was trained back before anything like this was available."

"We have doctors from New York City, Kansas City and Detroit coming here to do their residency just to work in a trauma center like this," said Dr. Jay Coates, trauma specialist. "That says a lot."

The unit's roster of celebrity patients includes actress Lauren Hutton, rapper Tupac Shakur and magician Roy Horn. All three were brought to UMC's trauma unit.

Hutton was in a motorcycle accident while Horn was attacked by his white tiger onstage during a live performance at The Mirage. Both of these men lived, but Shakur, who had been shot, could not be saved.

Other patients may not have name recognition but their injuries call for dramatic action.

"There are times when we have to open up the chest and use our hands to massage the heart," Fildes said. "Open-heart massage, we do that about two or three times a week."

The trauma unit at UMC meets or exceeds the standards at other top-rated trauma centers in the United States.

It is the first and only hospital in Nevada to achieve a Level 1 Trauma designation by the state.

It has 11 resuscitation beds, 14 intensive care beds -- soon to expand to 18 -- and three surgical suites.

The staff includes 10 trauma surgeons, 12 emergency physicians, eight neurosurgeons, 14 orthopedic surgeons and 14 anesthesiologists.

The county hospital's coverage area is 10,000 square miles.

In 2005, the trauma center cared for 12,281 patients and had 3,175 admissions.

Of those admissions, 41 percent were due to vehicle crashes, 48 percent were blunt trauma injuries, 11 percent were gunshot wounds and 10 percent were stab wounds.

"The public's thinking is, 'OK, one bad guy shot another bad guy and went to UMC,' " Fildes said. "But a lot of our patients are just regular people."

Fildes was recently appointed as the national chairperson for the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Committee on Trauma.

He is a professor of surgery with the University of Nevada School of Medicine. He began his career as attending surgeon for UMC in 1996.

"UMC is proud of Dr. Fildes," said UMC Chief Executive Officer Lacy Thomas. "He represents the highest standard of dedication and professionalism and, through this appointment, will certainly do great things for Nevada."

The trauma unit was built with expansion in mind.

It is currently configured to handle the needs of a city with a population of 2 million.