SAM'S ACCIDENT

brothers
Originally uploaded by ibreak4glass

here is the whole story.

Friday after school Sam decided he wanted to go for a bike ride with his brother. Sam is on the right in the photo, his brother Dan on the left.
He usually goes to the school playground which is just around the corner from where we live.
Mike and I were just discussing what we were gonna do for dinner, I was on the computer
when Inder a friend of Sam's ran up on the porch and started to pound on the door and ring
the door bell. I said to Mike, what could it be that he was in such a hurry to get Sam for?
I asked Inder what was up.
He said Sam was hit by a car.
Mike Jumped up got his car keys, I jumped up and threw my computer, I was looking for my
purse and phone to call 911, and Screaming at the top of my lungs. Oh my god, oh my god...
hyperventilating.
I went out side and Mike was pulling away. I dialed 911 and they had already gotten a call.
My Nieghbor was standing out side, I told her Sam was hit and I needed to get a ride. as
we drove up to where he was I jumped out of the car as it was still moving.

I saw his shoes by the curb and he was a good 20 feet away from them. I didn't see the car
or all the people just Sam.

He was lying on the the side of the road, face down,in a pool of blood. He wasn't moving.
I called to him and got down next to him and tried to get him to say something. He started moaning
and crying and tried to lift up his head, I tried to get him to stop moving, but he couldn't hear
me or answer me. His face was on the curb. He had grass in his mouth, a huge cut above his eye
and his Eye was the size of a grapefruit. His body was limp lying half on the curb and half in the street.
His arm was contorted.
The paramedics tryed to pull me away, finally did, and put me in the ambulance. They got Sam up and
in the ambulance. We were about 10 minutes from the hospital. I tried so hard to get a hold of the elders,
no one was in town or answering the phone. I got to the hospital and went into the triage room. I told the
docs, each one individually that he was to have no whole blood. I am one of Jehovah's witnesses and if he
could speak for himself, he would tell you. NO BLOOD. I asked if they would give him procrit or EPO, or some
non blood volume expanders. They promised they would do all they could.
They assessed him.
his lower left leg bone was broken, his upper bone the femur was shattered, his left arm was broken and they
thought maybe some head fractures.

they took him upstairs to intensive care, and came out and said they need to do surgery immediately to
repair his leg, the doc promised me he would do all he could to make sure there was minimal blood loss and
not use blood.
They did say that there was a possibility that they would get a court order and force blood. but they assured
me he would be ok, they were expecting 3 hours in surgery and that was it.

When they came out, he had put a rod in his femur and pulled all his shattered pieces together.
his lower leg was screwed with a plate, they had to remove his pin that was in his hip in order to get
to the leg.

They didn't fix his arm, only put it in a half cast so it would not be too heavy. He had radial nerve damage on
the left arm that was affecting his hand and fingers.

He was on a ventilator and they were keeping him sedated. Waking him up every hour to do Nuerological tests.
He screamed so much while he was awake, he was in so much pain. But he was able to wiggle his toes, and raise two
fingers on his right, but couldn't do much with his left hand.
They also found multiple fractures of his Orbital, temporal, mandibular facial bones, and a fracture at the base of his neck at
the T1-C7 vertibrae. So they put him in a special head and neck brace. He started to spike a fever, and was swelling pretty bad. apparently his blood levels were pretty low, he had lost half of his blood volume. I kept reinforcing that he was not to get blood but to please do all they can for him to build up his blood. They came in late Saturday after noon and said they were giving him blood. I said NO, Rich said NO. We again asked them to give him EPO or procrit and to do what ever they could with out using whole blood. My friend called the Liaison committee. They kept pushing, we kept saying our representatives were coming. Please just give us time.
This one Doctor was being very adamant and said they already had a court order in place, that it was in place before they did his surgery. Although they did not use it then. She said she was going to give him blood and I kept saying no.
His levels were still dropping.
the Members of the liaison committee arrived, one being a doc at the VA hospital. The other was Daryl, don't know what he does for a living but he was very articulate and very much lawyer like. They had no physical court order. They only had a hand written order in the chart stating it was as per some lawyer. Daryl said they had to produce an actual court order and charge me with neglect or child endagerment. They had nothing, because it was the weekend. They were breaking there own hospital policies left and right. Breaking several laws as well. They asked me what I wanted them to do, and I asked for time, please just give us a little more time. I also said again to start building his volume and blood. They were ignoring my wishes. The Nuero surgeon came in and told us Sam needed to have a spinal tap to see if his infection was in the spinal fluid. He told us a couple of weeks ago at another hospital he worked in they had a simular case. that in the pharmacy they had synthetic blood products and other means to build up Sam's blood. He went out in our behalf to try and talk to the Doctors , to ask them to call over at Gates Circle hospital and find out if there was something else. He was on our side, this bought us some time. I told them to call Englewood NJ hospital 1-800-NO Bloodand please discuss options with them.
The liaison brothers asked us to meet privately and discussed the issue.
He explained it was not personal, we are not there to preach, that this was business.
He told us of the laws they were breaking. And told us we had a right to appear before
the judge to stop the action of the court order. ALL of our rights were taken from us.
When we got back there, Rich (Sam's Dad)was there telling them NO BLOOD, take it off NOW.
they called security and insisted they had a court order but would not produce a document.
Daryl the HL brother stayed with us every step of the way. I begged them to give us more
time, to give him pro crit. They finally did that. they pumped in the procrit and when it was done
they came in and said they were giving him the blood.
Daryl said at that point it was out of our hands and was in tears.
They gave him only one unit. the equivalent of about a cup.
They insisted that would build his oxygen level in his blood.
All this over a unit.

Sam was removed from the ventilator on Sunday, he was combative, screaming things like,
head trauma, head trauma. He was withdrawing from the medication. Then he said "let the elders take
care of it. Let the elders take care of it. Sam was also cursing and throwing himself around. He grabbed
hold of my neck and almost ripped my head off. It took 4 people to hold him down, each episode was less
intense. We were told that sometimes head trauma will cause personality changes. I thought I lost
that part of my boy.
By Monday he was his self, at least nearly himself. He kept asking me to pray with him. And asked the brothers
to pray with him.
When I was talking to a nurse and a doc he shouted out "I don't want blood" I said to him, did you say something,
"Yes, I don't want blood"
on Wednesday the bone doctor said he wanted to do surgery on Sam's arm to put a rod into the bone and fix the nerve.
He told me that blood was not necassary. That he did not need it. And that there was minimal blood loss involved.
The Surgical team came in and said she was going to give sam a unit of blood before surgery. I said she wasn't and if
that were the case he was going to be transferred to Pittsburgh. She said that would be up to the anesthesiologist.
I told her I wanted a few days more so his levels could build themselves up.
Later in the day the anesthesiologist came in to see Sam, he said there was no way he would need blood prior too or
during surgery and wrote his plan of action and then made a copy and gave it to us. Another surgical team member stopped by
and asked how things were going. I told her I wanted a few days for Sam's blood to build up before the surgery and that the Doc said he had a 4 to 10 day window to work with. She told me she would go in our behalf and get the surgery cancelled for the next day. The bone doc came back down a few hours later and told us he wasn't going to do the surgery, that they were going to try something else. and maybe in 5 or 6 days do the surgery.

Then another Doc came in and asked to speak to me privately. He essentially said that if a bone fragment were to break off or some other thing would happen that they would give Sam blood, and he strongly suggested we transfer him out.

Today we speak to the president of the hospital and inform her if his Patient rights are not protected we will take him else where.

So that is where we are.

Sam has some vision loss, some hearing loss, and the loss of use of his left arm, all of which we are hoping will heal and change.

Thats all I have for now. I will try to keep you updated.