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Emergency Treatment for SCI
Jeff’s life was saved by skilled professionals who work for the Barrington Rescue Squad, Rhode Island Hospital, and the Hasbro
Children’s Hospital.
Only a few years ago, people who had a
severe spinal cord injury like Jeff’s would have died at poolside or soon after.
Those who survived the initial trauma might have deteriorated
rapidly during the first few hours. This is because of a cruel quirk in
the human body’s reaction to a spinal cord injury. Left alone, the body will
flood the trauma site with substances that actually eat away at undamaged
tissue, resulting very quickly in a spinal deficit that is more paralytic,
and more likely fatal.
In recent years, researchers have begun
to understand this reactive process, and have found ways to prevent it. As soon
as Jeff arrived at the hospital, a trauma team administered steroids whose
effect was to interrupt the “normal” destructive reaction, and to preserve the
healthy spinal tissue that remained above and below the point of the lesion. The
team stabilized Jeff’s broken neck, so shifting bone fragments would not do
further damage.
Intensive Care
Jeff remained a patient in the Hasbro
Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) from July 4 until July 29, 1998. They kept
his battered body alive with drugs, machines, and constant care. Not everyone in
Jeff's condition survives the experience. People wonder if a victim of paralysis
will ever walk again, but a blood clot or an opportunistic
 infection
can kill him. The ICU team had to cope with everything, because the whole system
-- heart, lungs, temperature control, fluids, blood pressure -- everything
was in disarray.
Jeff’s head and spine were immobilized
by a halo vest. His head, neck and chest were
locked in a rigid frame. His head was positioned by sharp spikes twisted through
his scalp, into his skull. The doctors hoped that his neck bones could heal
spontaneously, without surgery, if they could be kept solidly in place for a
long time. The options were to stay locked rigid in the halo for several months
(a frustrating, maddening thing for a paralyzed patient), or to undergo surgery
right away, and “fuse” the broken bones with metal pins, wires and bone
grafts. Jeff and his family agreed to take the longer, harder path because it
held out the greatest hope for maximum residual movement in Jeff’s head and
neck. Since he would have no motor function below the point of injury, it would
be nice to have the maximum movement above. His head was the only “switching
mechanism” he had left.
The point of the ICU experience was to
stabilize Jeff and to get him through the crisis stage, so that he could
graduate from Hasbro and enroll in the next stage. They call it
“rehabilitation.”
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