Center’s trauma team, intensive care unit, and rehabilitation unit.
It ended with a helicopter flight to a Level II Trauma Center’s life-saving expertise
Manton’s David Letts has a foggy memory of riding his motorcycle toward his dad’s house on Father’s Day, June 18. Then, time stood still and everything went dark.
A pickup pulled in front of his motorcycle.
For more than a month he was unconscious to this world. In recent weeks he has come to understand if not for the hand of God, a neighbor, an off-duty state trooper, North Flight EMS first responders, North Flight-Aero Med helicopter crew, and Munson Medical Center’s trauma team, his story would have a different ending.
“If you have to be at a hospital, this is a great place to be in,” he said. “They have some of the best people you can get. The nurses really know their job, they care about their patients. It’s a great place to be.”
Letts’ helicopter flight to Munson Medical Center’s Level II Trauma Center made him one of 817 trauma patients cared for by the hospital’s trauma team in the first half of 2017.
Munson Medical Center Chief of Surgical Services Walter Noble, M.D., said Letts’ injuries resulted in activation of the full trauma team of specialists. His care involved a trauma surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, and vascular surgeon in addition to the Emergency Department physician, physician assistants, nurses, radiology staff, pharmacy staff, operating room nurses and other support staff who are part of trauma team care.
“The availability of a trauma team, established treatment protocols, specialty providers, blood bank, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and all the support services resulted in the lifesaving care he received,” he said. “It truly takes a trauma team and trauma program to deliver the care this patient needed.”
Munson Medical Center recently again received three-year verification as a Level II Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons (ACS). The verification affirms patient trauma care from the EMS response through the hospital to patient rehabilitation. Efforts to obtain ACS Level II verification involved efforts by several areas of the hospital including the Emergency Department, radiology, lab, nursing, operating room, physician leaders, hospital administration, and EMS management.
As the only Level II Trauma Center in the northern Lower Peninsula, Munson Medical Center serves as a resource for nearly 500,000 people should tragedy occur. Statistics on the first half of 2017 reveal an 11 percent increase in overall trauma incidents over 2016.
Key to Letts’ survival were actions by a Manton Good Samaritan who stopped at the crash site, saw the condition of his leg, and used a belt to fashion a tourniquet to stem blood loss. An off-duty Michigan State Police Trooper also arrived quickly and went for his first-aid kit to return with a real tourniquet. “They said if I would have laid there too much longer I would have bled to death,” Letts said. “They saved my life.”
North Flight Aero Med’s helicopter crew were able to give Letts two units of blood and sustain his breathing as he was flown to the hospital’s waiting trauma team. Once at the hospital he required a massive blood transfusion.
“One nurse told me she had never seen anybody receive the amount of blood and plasma they gave me,” Letts said.
Surgeries followed by a long stint in the Intensive Care Unit and another recovery floor have brought him to the place he is at today on the Rehabilitation Unit. Letts said he is making progress regaining the use of his right arm and learning to manage with the loss of his right leg. He said his arm was torn from its socket and physicians first thought he might have to lose that as well.
He now daily goes through a regimen of rehabilitation with physical, occupational and speech therapists.
“Lying in bed for a month with a feeding tube took every bit of strength from me,” said the truck driver. “There is definite improvement every day.”
Letts said he was wearing a helmet at the time of the crash and is thankful his brain was protected.
“I always wear a helmet, it’s the only protection you have,” he said. “I am so thankful to the Lord that I didn’t lose my right arm and that I am still here. I’m really lucky to be here.”
Munson Medical Center was first verified as a Level II Trauma Center in 2006. For more information on the trauma program click here.