Inside
> Trauma Surgery Saves Gunshot Victim > Expert Orthopedic Care > JCLMyChart > Community Donors Help Desert Mission
Essential Health News and Information
January / February 2013
To Live is to Give
February is National Heart Month...
R
>
The Beat Goes On
Save a Life Even if you have not had CPR training, when an adult collapses, follow two simple steps:
1) Call 9-1-1.
2) Push hard and fast in
the center of the chest.
Heart Attack Symptoms
Th e mi racu lous recovery of Rach el Bai ley
achel Bailey believes in giving; she volunteers to do good for those in need. She never imagined that someday her life would depend on receiving. But while driving to work in September 2011, Rachel was broadsided by a pickup truck that smashed violently into her door, internally decapitating her skull from her spine. John C. Lincoln North Mountain Hospital trauma neurosurgeon Gianni Vishteh, MD, said patients with such devastating injuries are almost always killed. Those few who do survive, like actor Christopher Reeve, are usually paralyzed. “When such injuries occur, the head is only supported via soft tissue and skin,” Dr. Vishteh explains.
Not everyone experiences every symptom, and women are more likely than men to suffer milder symptoms. Call 9-1-1 for the following:
continued on Page 2
> Chest discomfort, such
as a pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain that won’t go away.
> Discomfort in the arms,
back, neck, jaw or stomach.
> Shortness of breath. > Cold sweat, nausea and/ or lightheadedness.
I.C.E. Card The I.C.E. – In Case of Emergency – card stores all your essential medical information and conveniently fits into your wallet or purse so you can have it at all times. To request a free I.C.E. card, call 623-434-6265 or email mona.seamon@JCL.com.
“Movement one way or the other can lead to catastrophic spinal cord injury.” “The truck knocked Rachel’s car across the street, where it bounced up over a curb,” said her dad, David Bailey. “I have no idea how her injury was not more damaging than it was.” Part of the answer lay in the immediate assistance Rachel received. A man working nearby – who had been in a serious accident and knew the importance of keeping her head still – ran to Rachel’s car, and held her head against the headrest until paramedics arrived. Emergency personnel from Phoenix Fire Station 7 arrived less than 10 minutes after the collision, and immediately transferred her to the Level I Trauma Center at John C. Lincoln North Mountain Hospital. Ironically, Rachel had volunteered and her mother, Gail Bailey, had worked there. Rachel had very bad head and spinal injuries. She was comatose and paralyzed in her left leg and arm. Her spinal injury was a very complicated type of occipital cervical dissociation, involving dislocation of the first vertebra off the second vertebra in her neck.
A miraculously recovered Rachel Bailey, right, gets a hug from her neurosurgeon, Gianni Vishteh, MD. Above, Rachel lies in the Intensive Care Unit after her car, top photo, was broadsided by another driver.
>