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 Several amazing heroic stories and medical breakthroughs featured on Oprah. Two of them about the Bionic Woman Claudia Mitchell and the Echolocating Blind Boy Ben Underwood who sees with sound, I already described in my blog 2 months ago and here's one 'new' fascinating tale of a 'series of miracles' of all types - human, medical, divine…
“When she was a senior in high school in Akron, Ohio, Jessica Clements joined the Army reserves. She was deployed to Iraq, and though she was scared, she was ready to defend her country.
On May 5, 2004, Jessica's worst fear came true. A roadside bomb was detonated near the unarmored truck she rode in, along with eight other soldiers and a civilian. The shrapnel from the bomb shot into Jessica's lower back and penetrated her skull into three different lobes of her brain. As blood poured from her shattered skull, Jessica lay unconscious and near death. Helicopters immediately airlifted her to Baghdad, where doctors rushed Jessica to surgery.
She was given only a 2 % chance of survival.
To remove the largest pieces of shrapnel from Jessica's brain, neurosurgeon Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Poffenbarger had to perform a craniectomy—he removed almost half of her skull. Then, on the hopes that the right section of Jessica's skull could one day be reattached, Poffenbarger sliced open Jessica's abdomen and placed the four-inch bone inside her body.
Then Dr. Poffenbarger put Jessica in a medically induced coma in hopes that the brain swelling would go down, a common course of action for severe head trauma patients. Even though some of his colleagues thought she should be sent home to die, he refused to give up and insisted Jessica have further treatment. While she was still in a coma, Jessica was transported back home. Her mother was told that the prognosis was grim.
Jessica has been called a “miracle girl” because after four months with nearly half her skull missing, three months in the hospital and nine months in outpatient care, she has recovered from her injuries. Though she doesn't remember anything of the explosion, she does remember having part of her skull in her abdomen. “The top portion of it was up by my lower ribs,” Jessica says. “If I'd move a certain direction, the bottom part of it would touch my hip bone. It was very uncomfortable.”
Though people call her a hero, Jessica says the real hero is the man who saved her life, Dr. Jeff Poffenbarger. Since that fateful day when he saved her life, Jessica has never met her hero…until the day of the show.
Dr. Poffenbarger, an Army neurosurgeon, says he performed up to 7 craniectomies on soldiers a day in Iraq.
“I had decided when I went to Iraq that we were going to go straight to the wall for every wounded soldier,” he says. “We weren't going to give up on any of them. In [Jessica's] case, she had a very devastating injury.”
Dr. Poffenbarger says Jessica's condition when she arrived was bad and getting worse. “There was some thought she might pass away right there in the trauma bay, but I thought if we moved quickly, that we could save her,” he says.
“I am so overwhelmed,” Jessica says. “These are the hands that saved my life.”
The most amazing thing is that Jessica had to learn to speak, read, walk and function again almost as a newborn baby and she looks, sounds and presents herself in a beautiful, extraordinary way, almost incredible to believe, but true… Miracle on all accounts indeed.
And these are the brief details of the other 2 unforgettable stories and spirits.
THE BOY WHO SEES WITH SOUND By Alex Tresniowski.
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