Amy Makes a Fast Comeback
Mark remembers the details of the day clearly. On the morning of January 1, his daughter Amy called from Mexico and proudly announced that she’d just learned to ride a four-wheeler. She was visiting her grandmother in Queretaro, a small town not far from Mexico City, accompanied by her sister Xochitl and her mother Adelaida.
“Amy’s a real go-getter and likes to try new things, but I had a bad feeling,” Mark remembers. “I told her she shouldn’t be driving an ATV – she’s only 12 – but if she did, to be sure to wear a helmet.”
It was 5 p.m. when Mark got the call from the emergency clinic in Mexico. “Two of the three of them were hurt,” he says. “Amy was driving, her sister was in the middle and their mother was on the back. It was a big ATV. They were out on the road, and none of the three was wearing a helmet. Two cars came up from behind them and collided when they tried to pass the ATV. One veered across the road and hit the girls from behind.”
Amy was badly hurt. Thrown from the four-wheeler, she landed on her left side. Her injuries were extensive: two fractures of the left jaw, hairline fractures of the nose and pelvis, a lacerated spleen and a pneumothorax – a collection of air in the space around the lungs.When the emergency physician in Mexico had ruled out bleeding in the brain, Amy was released from the clinic. After an eight-hour ride in the back of a pick-up truck to Saltillo, she was met by her uncle and flew home to Houston. She arrived at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on January 3.
“I picked her up at the airport and took her to Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, because I knew it was the only Level I pediatric trauma center in Houston,” says Mark, who is a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines. “She was a mess when she arrived – bruised and swollen – and she’d been wearing the same clothes for three days.”
Within 24 hours of her arrival at the Children’s Emergency Center – and evaluation and treatment of her injuries by the pediatric trauma team – she was seen by David Wainwright, M.D., a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital and a professor in the division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. “Amy had quite a bit of facial soft-tissue trauma and swelling, and it was immediately obvious that her upper and lower teeth weren’t fitting together properly. With the swelling, she was unable to swallow. She was not a happy camper.”
Amy had a fracture near the front of her left jaw and one in the back, near the jaw’s angle. In an hour-long procedure, Dr. Wainwright wired Amy’s teeth together to stabilize the jaw. She was released six days later, on January 9.
A panoramic X-ray done 10 days later showed that the jawbone was separating. “We were hoping that the wiring would hold the jaw in place and allow us to avoid further surgery,” Dr. Wainwright says. “But the fractures were serious and not favorable to management with wiring alone.”
In the first of two surgical procedures, Dr. Wainwright and his team placed arch bars, which are similar to braces but more complex and invasive. In the second procedure, he implanted a titanium plate to stabilize the fracture at the front of the jaw. “Whenever possible, we try to work from inside the mouth to eliminate visible scarring,” he says. “Since one fracture was near the joint, it could not be plated, so we needed to rewire Amy’s jaw closed for three more weeks.” The arch bars were surgically removed at the end of February.
Mark home-schooled Amy for six weeks. When the wires were removed in mid-February, she returned to school.
“Early on, our main concern for Amy was avoiding infection and ensuring her healing,” Dr. Wainwright says. “Once we removed the arch bars, our main emphasis was mobilizing the jaw and getting her back on a normal diet. At our last follow-up visit, her teeth were fitting together well and the jaw was functioning normally.”
Amy’s other injuries healed over time with bed rest. Today, she’s back in action, participating in softball, volleyball and swimming.
“With all of Amy’s injuries we saw a lot of doctors at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital – pretty much everything from head to toe,” Mark says. “Through it all, we had the very best care. Every one of Amy’s nurses was top notch. I would recommend that hospital to anyone. You notice the difference the minute you walk through the front door. The level of caring is amazing.”