(audience applauding)
- So I'm a physician, a surgeon actually,
and that took a lot of sacrifice
and a lot of time to get all of that training done.
And over that time,
I went to four years of undergraduate
and four years of medical school.
At first, I thought I wanted to be an anesthesiologist.
So I did some training in that
before doing my surgery training.
And then ultimately I did trauma critical care
and burn surgery fellowship down here, actually.
But that's 16 years of training.
And at the worst of it,
I was at Hopkins in Baltimore
and it was before the 80-hour work week rule.
And so we were working about 134 hours a week
and there's only 168 hours in a week.
I mean, like in the entire week, right?
So that's 34 hours to eat, sleep,
and hopefully sleep with your girlfriend.
I mean, not a lot of time
for the important stuff, people.
So at one point I went like 93 days without a day off
I'm talking no Saturdays, no Sundays,
just 93 consecutive days.
And when we were on-call
it was usually every other day,
every other night.
And it was in the hospital,
it wasn't home call.
And so we'd go in at 4:00 AM
and you might not get home until 4:00, 6:00 PM the next day.
So 36, 40 hours on,
a few hours off and you're by at 4:00 AM.
And one of those times,
my counterpart, the other resident was sick.
And so I ended up in the hospital
for four days without leaving on-call.
And I'm not talking about the call room
I'm talking about working.
So it's like 101, 102 hours.
And that's why there's a saying in surgery that is,
"Eat when you can, sleep when you can,
and don't fuck with the pancreas."
But that's another story.
(audience laughing)
So anyway, there was one point when I was in residency,
I was going through a really tough time, just personally.
There's not lot of time like I said,
for your personal life.
And it was just a dark time for me.
I was in a dark place.
I didn't know if I wanted to continue
with my surgery training.
I didn't know if I wanted to continue with medicine at all.
I was depressed.
I mean, I was really hurting.
And at the time I was the chief
of the Trauma Surgery Service,
and we got this call,
we got this patient that was coming in, this girl.
And the story from the paramedics is,
it was her 16th birthday and she wanted to take a drive.
She wanted to get in her car by herself
and go to McDonald's and come back home.
Well, she didn't put on her seatbelt
and she took a curve a little too fast
and she goes flying off this curve which was on a hill,
she goes flying off the hill through the windshield,
and then the car flipped over and landed on top of her.
So this is a devastating crash.
And she's unconscious obviously and has to be intubated,
which means a breathing tube put in at the scene.
And she comes into us
and she has a head injury that is horrific
that could have killed her.
She had bilateral lung contusions that could kill her still,
and she had a grade four liver fracture that could kill her.
She had a grade five splenic fracture that could kill her,
and a grade five pelvis fracture that could kill her.
I mean, this girl was broken.
I mean, I guess we kind of both were at that point in time
but that night was insane
and I get her to the intensive care unit
and get her on a ventilator.
And we're starting this massive transfusion.
Normally we would take that spleen out.
You don't really need your spleen,
but we were afraid to open the abdomen
for fear that it'd let loose that liver.
And ain't nobody living without a liver.
I mean, it's in the name, liver,
you know, you got to have a liver.
(audience laughing)
So we couldn't do that.
So this crazy transfusion,
just trying to keep her alive minute by minute.
And at some point I hear that the parents have arrived.
The crash was in a small town.
So even though this chic,
we don't know who this 16 year old is,
she's just Jane Doe to us,
she's a random patient.
But her parents knew that she'd had a crash
and they knew where the medics were bringing her.
And so they've gone through administration,
are on there in the consultation room.
So I finally get sort of a tiny little minute
that I can go and just kind of update them.
And I end up alone with them for a minute.
And as I was walking there I was thinking,
"Any one of these injuries could kill her.
Like this is so awful right now.
And I have to go and prepare this family.
I have to let them know how bleak this is
but I also don't want to squash any hope they may have."
'Cause that doesn't help anybody to squash that.
So it's one of those weird things in trauma surgery,
especially in the intensive care unit
where the doctors and the nurses
are spending almost as much time taking care
of the family as they are the patients
who are oftentimes not with it or completely unconscious.
And so it's a very delicate balance to do this job.
And so I end up alone with them for a minute
in this consultation room.
And I say to them,
"I want you to understand,
I don't know if she'll make it through the night."
And I've gone through all these five injuries
and how each one of 'em are trying to take her life
like as we speak.
And I said, but she's 16.
I mean, as best I can tell,
she's a healthy fit, 16 year old.
And if anybody could beat it,
that would be it.
They're still hysterical, they're sobbing.
That was the closest thing I could give them
to any kind of hope.
And so I'm like,
"But I got to get back in there,
she's real critical."
And so I stand up to leave and I'm walking to the door
and all of a sudden the sobbing stops
and it's like everything calmed down
and the mama says,
"She's going to be okay."
And my hand's on the door and I stop
and I turn back around and I said,
"Ma'am, what?"
And she said,
"She's going to be okay.
Her name is Savannah."
And she kind of points at me.
"Your patient Doe is Savannah."
And I look down and I'm wearing the appropriate scrub top
for that hospital,
but for whatever reason
and I think it's the first time it ever happened,
I was wearing the inappropriate bottoms.
My scrub bottoms were for my medical school.
And I had done my clinical rotations in Savannah, Georgia.
So Savannah was written across my ass.
(audience laughing)
And that was just what they needed
that little tiny bit of encouragement.
(audience laughing)
And if my ass could bring hope to the people,
(audience laughing)
I'm here to help, what can I say?
So anyway, so I was grateful
that they had some shred of hope,
but I walked out of there and I was all like,
"That was funny."
(audience laughing)
But, oh my gosh!
This girl's still dying.
So I rushed back in there and it was just,
I mean, I never left her bedside
and it was just insane the entire night.
And she did make it through the night
but then every day it was like that.
It was a constant battle to keep her alive
and I'd go in there and I'd be like,
"Hey Savannah, it's Dr. T."
She's unconscious but you know,
I'm still talking to her.
And we had to do a lot of painful procedures on her
during that time to help get her through this.
She had chest tubes put in,
chest tubes taken out.
Those chest tubes are very large,
they're garden hose size tubes
that go in between your ribs
to drain off fluid, air,
and blood from around the lungs
so the lungs can work better.
And she had to have those procedures multiple times.
I put in multiple central lines,
which are like really large IVs
that go in your neck.
And ultimately, obviously we had to give her tracheotomy,
which is a breathing tube through the neck
as opposed to through the mouth.
It's a more stable long term treatment
for somebody on a ventilator,
particularly with a bad head injury and a feeding tube.
And so there were all these things
and I tried to warn her before I did anything to her
and just continued to take care of her.
And we made it through day by day,
but still you knew that there were complications
from all these,
like these were too horrible of an injury
to get away with just,
"Oh, you're healed."
So it was just like,
"When is the next complication coming?
When is the next fight for her life coming?"
And it was like that every day and week after week.
And even at that, we were like,
"Even if we get her through this,
we don't know if one day she's going to wake up at all.
And if she does,
with that brain injury, will she be catatonic?
Will she be in a regress state?
Will she just have some deficits?"
I mean, we had no idea.
But I took care of her on that intensive care unit
for two or three months.
And then I consulted through the Vascular Surgery Service
for some blood clots for a few more months.
But after about five months or so,
it was time for me to move on.
I rotated out to a different hospital in that same town
and I lost track of her.
I mean, that service had anywhere
from 30 to 50 patients on it at any given time.
And I mean, I treated hundreds of patients
over those same months that I was taking care of Savannah.
So I lost track of a lot of patients.
And I went on to go back to this,
I mean, it was the same as it was there,
but a hundred plus hours a week
and just a high stress job all the time.
And I was still struggling and still didn't know
what I wanted to do in my personal life.
I didn't know what I wanted to do in my career.
And with surgery,
the stresses are as much mental as they are just the time.
It's not just the physical tiredness and the time,
but I'm the type of person
I took my work home with me a lot.
So I would worry about the patients and the cases
even when I was off duty.
And so it was a very difficult time.
And I just felt like I was really
just kind of limping along during that time.
So about a year after Savannah's surgery,
or not surgery,
but after her accident that she had,
I was back in that same intensive care unit again.
And I don't know where she was
and I'm working on all these patients,
and one day I'm talking to this nurse
and if you hadn't noticed,
I talk a little loud, that's just normal.
And so I'm talking to this nurse across the way
and this girl approaches me and she is like,
"Hey."
And I'm like, "Hey."
And I don't know who she is.
And she lowers her shirt a little bit
in the front to show me a tracheotomy scar.
And just about the time I realized who she is,
she says, "It's me, Savannah!"
And I was like,
"Oh my gosh!"
She looked great.
She was healthy and she was talking to me
and she only had one class to make up
so she could graduate with her fellow high schoolers.
And she was so excited and it was so much better than
I ever thought that she would be
after all that she had been through
and all those injuries she had.
And then all of a sudden it occurred me I was like,
"Wait a minute!
How do you know who I am?
Like, you've never met me.
You were unconscious every time I ever took care of you."
And she said, "Oh, well, I recognize your voice.
You were the one who talked to me."
(Doctor Dixon chuckles)
So all those times that I would say,
"Savannah, this is going to hurt,
but I'm going to do everything I can
to try to make it as painless as possible,
but it's going to hurt a little bit."
She had heard me and she remembered it.
And so I knew that treating people like a human being
it does matter.
It does make a difference.
And for me, that's when I finally realized
that all that sacrifice
and all that blood, sweat, and tears,
it was worth it,
thank you. (audience applauds)
- [Announcer] T. Dixon.