Ross's Good Bad Luck
At 7 a.m. on a sultry July morning in 2005, 16-year-old Ross and his friends Matt and Avi left Houston traveling north on Interstate 45. They were on their way to Trinity, Texas, to pick up Avi's girlfriend at Camp Olympia, an overnight sports camp on Lake Livingston.
Avi was behind the wheel of the GMC Yukon XL, with Ross in the passenger seat and Matt in the back. Ross had unbuckled his seatbelt to change his shirt, just as Avi asked him to check the map for directions.
When Avi veered suddenly onto exit 113, the Yukon turned at a 90-degree angle between the exit ramp and the highway.
"We all knew the car was going to flip over," Ross says. "I'll never forget the sound of metal scraping the road. The CD cases flew past my face, and I hit my head on the window frame when the car went upside down."
The car made four revolutions, but Ross remained inside for only one of them. He was thrown free of the rolling vehicle and catapulted about 20 feet down the highway. He looked up and saw the car rolling toward him.
The Yukon landed on his chest and collapsed his lung. As it rocked to a standstill, Ross was folded in half at the waist, with his legs bent back over his head. He could feel the hot underside of the car burning his left leg.
"For my friends, that's where the accident ended, but I was trapped under the car," he says. "I called to them, 'Avi, Matt, help me, I'm stuck.' I was scared I was going to die. I was scared I had messed up my spine. I could see a big strong man running across four lanes of the highway, and the three of them lifted this 3,000-pound car off me and pulled me out. I heard the ambulance a few minutes later."
As it sped toward Houston, the ambulance was met by Memorial Hermann Life Flight and the Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital pediatric transport team, led by pediatric intensivist Beatrize Cua, MD, and staffed by skilled transport nurses trained in providing advanced life support.
"My face was swollen and I couldn't breathe," Ross says. "I could taste blood in my mouth from the collapsed lung. I was so scared, but once we landed and I was in the hospital I knew I would live. At the trauma center, they really knew what they were doing."
Ross was treated for a collapsed lung, fractured pelvis, separation of the sacroiliac, a deep wound on his hip and a head wound that required 40 staples. He also had second- and third-degree burns covering 10 percent of his body, the most severe of them concentrated on his left leg.
He underwent two skin grafts, performed by plastic surgeon Daniel Freet, MD. Freet told Ross exactly what to expect during treatment. After debridement surgery to remove debris and dead skin, Freet assessed the burns and applied glycerinized pigskin as a temporary covering to allow healing.
"Dr. Freet and the nurses in the burn intensive care unit took great care of me," Ross says now. "I really did have the best of care." His mother, Patty, agrees and credits Freet and the nursing staff with her son's recovery.
"The nurses are such a cohesive unit," she says. "They work together like a well-oiled machine, but at the same time they're incredibly sensitive and sweet. That meant a lot to us. I'm grateful for everything. First of all, he survived. The care he received was tremendous, and they also took very good care of me.
"They saved Ross' life and they've helped him recover so beautifully. It was a nightmare experience handled with such beauty and grace. I told him, 'You're just like me – you've got good bad luck.'"
Ross has healed faster than expected. He was out of the hospital in just over three weeks, and while he wasn't expected to walk until early November of 2005, he was jogging by the middle of October.
"It was a difficult experience but I have so many positive feelings about it," Ross says. This summer he shared his experience with burn patients and survivors at Camp Janus, a Memorial Day tradition at Children's Memorial Hermann. "I volunteered to help out as someone who can understand a little bit of what they're going through and help give them hope."