Chapter 1 - The Operation
The overhead lights in the operating room shone brightly over the young female patient lying motionless on the operating table. The teenage girl was still unconscious, sedated with general anesthesia, and clothed in a blue hospital gown.
A computerized tomography (CT) scan, and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of her entire body had already been done, and she was hooked up to a wide variety of machines that monitored everything from her breathing to her brain activity. The grave diagnosis so far: traumatic brain injury and a severe concussion that caused damage to the memory-storing areas of the brain, dislocated left shoulder, two hairline fractures in the right shoulder blade and humerus, a fractured left collarbone, fracture of the left radius and ulna, a broken left wrist, sprained left and right ankle, and a missing incisor, one premolar, and two molars. However, these injuries were not the ones that occupied the minds of the surgical team in the operating room.
The chief surgeon, resident surgeon, two surgical technicians, the anesthesiologist, and two registered nurses were moving quickly and methodically around the young lady, preparing to begin a complicated operation that could mean death to the patient.
Dr. David Lance Windsor, the chief surgeon of the operating team quickly glanced down at the four-and-a-half inch shard of glass protruding out of his young patient's left thigh. His alert eyes flashed to the bag of O positive blood hanging from the IV stand, the crimson liquid steadily flowing into the patient's arm. The well-renowned surgeon was confident in his and his team's ability to do their best to save the young patient on the operating table. He could only hope that nothing went wrong...and yet he knew the odds weren't in their favor.
Statistically speaking, there was an eighty percent chance that she would not make it off of the operating table alive. On the miraculous chance that she did, her recovery would be long and complicated, with little guarantee that she would completely recover, especially given that they had yet to determine the extent of the damage to her brain.
The surgical team surrounding her was more focused on the twenty percent chance that she would live. The four-and-a-half inch shard of glass buried in her upper thigh was dangerously close to her femoral artery. A fraction of a millimeter either to the left or the right would send the shard into the vital artery, and blood loss at that point would be fatal. The young patient had already suffered significant blood loss from her other injuries, and would most definitely not make it if the precious artery was damaged in any way.
Three hours and thirty nine minutes, an exhausted and concerned surgical team exited the operating room, carefully wheeling the young patient out on a padded stretcher.
Dr. Windsor watched as his resident surgeon and the two RNs guided her toward Intensive Care, worry still furrowing his brow. His young patient had lost a staggering total of close to three liters of blood. She had suffered a cardiac arrest episode just seconds after the glass shard had been carefully extracted from her leg, and barely two minutes had passed before she slipped into a coma. The patient had not responded to any verbal or physical stimuli, and she needed a ventilator to aid her irregular breathing.
As the doctor stared worriedly after the slowly disappearing figures of his staff and patient, he could only hope that she would somehow find the strength to pull through...to fight for her life.
The only thing anyone could do now was wait...
A computerized tomography (CT) scan, and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of her entire body had already been done, and she was hooked up to a wide variety of machines that monitored everything from her breathing to her brain activity. The grave diagnosis so far: traumatic brain injury and a severe concussion that caused damage to the memory-storing areas of the brain, dislocated left shoulder, two hairline fractures in the right shoulder blade and humerus, a fractured left collarbone, fracture of the left radius and ulna, a broken left wrist, sprained left and right ankle, and a missing incisor, one premolar, and two molars. However, these injuries were not the ones that occupied the minds of the surgical team in the operating room.
The chief surgeon, resident surgeon, two surgical technicians, the anesthesiologist, and two registered nurses were moving quickly and methodically around the young lady, preparing to begin a complicated operation that could mean death to the patient.
Dr. David Lance Windsor, the chief surgeon of the operating team quickly glanced down at the four-and-a-half inch shard of glass protruding out of his young patient's left thigh. His alert eyes flashed to the bag of O positive blood hanging from the IV stand, the crimson liquid steadily flowing into the patient's arm. The well-renowned surgeon was confident in his and his team's ability to do their best to save the young patient on the operating table. He could only hope that nothing went wrong...and yet he knew the odds weren't in their favor.
Statistically speaking, there was an eighty percent chance that she would not make it off of the operating table alive. On the miraculous chance that she did, her recovery would be long and complicated, with little guarantee that she would completely recover, especially given that they had yet to determine the extent of the damage to her brain.
The surgical team surrounding her was more focused on the twenty percent chance that she would live. The four-and-a-half inch shard of glass buried in her upper thigh was dangerously close to her femoral artery. A fraction of a millimeter either to the left or the right would send the shard into the vital artery, and blood loss at that point would be fatal. The young patient had already suffered significant blood loss from her other injuries, and would most definitely not make it if the precious artery was damaged in any way.
Three hours and thirty nine minutes, an exhausted and concerned surgical team exited the operating room, carefully wheeling the young patient out on a padded stretcher.
Dr. Windsor watched as his resident surgeon and the two RNs guided her toward Intensive Care, worry still furrowing his brow. His young patient had lost a staggering total of close to three liters of blood. She had suffered a cardiac arrest episode just seconds after the glass shard had been carefully extracted from her leg, and barely two minutes had passed before she slipped into a coma. The patient had not responded to any verbal or physical stimuli, and she needed a ventilator to aid her irregular breathing.
As the doctor stared worriedly after the slowly disappearing figures of his staff and patient, he could only hope that she would somehow find the strength to pull through...to fight for her life.
The only thing anyone could do now was wait...
