A young woman who lost half her blood in a terrifying car crash, and lived. A man with a fractured skull from a simple fall on his stairs. A crack team of nurses, surgeons and specialists on call 24/7. Welcome to the daily drama of the region’s trauma HQ
It was late on a Thursday afternoon in early December last year. Santanna and her mother-in-law had just finished installing a set of holiday flower arrangements at a client’s house in King Township, near Nobleton, Ont. The pair planned to fit in one more client visit before Santanna met her husband Dan for a dinner date.
As they turned out of the driveway, their truck collided with another car. Though both vehicles were badly damaged, no one was seriously injured. While Santanna waited for the police to turn up, Santanna’s husband and her father-in-law arrived.
About 40 minutes later, without warning, another car cleared the corner, slid on the ice and spun. It was followed by a black truck that swerved to avoid the car. It too struck the ice, hit Santanna and tossed her through the air. The truck then ran over her and dragged Santanna about four metres before it came to rest, with her buried in the snow under its rear wheels.
“The last thing I remember is being underneath the truck and having Dan dig me out. He was crying and freaking out. I said, ‘I love you, and ‘goodbye’,” recalls Santanna. “I didn’t think I was going to make it.”
Santanna owes her survival to a set of coincidences, some quick thinking by an off-duty emergency physician and a first-rate trauma team at Sunnybrook.
The crash took place not far from the home of a pair of Sunnybrook doctors. Dr. Valerie Krym was outside, cleaning snow off the steps of their house when her husband telephoned. He is the Medical Director at ORNGE, the transport medical service provider for the province of Ontario, and was on duty in ORNGE’s Communication Centre that evening. He’d heard about the crash and called home to check on his wife.
Left: Heather Mazurenko, RN, monitors incoming patients on the red phone. Centre: Santanna Marrocco receives a welcome visit from her mother Joanne.
By now it was dark. The ORNGE helicopter did not land at the scene because these landings are not safe to do at night, and there wasn’t a nearby helipad or airport available. A land ambulance was dispatched and already en route to the scene.
Dr. Krym, an emergency physician at Sunnybrook, walked to the end of her long driveway. The crash scene was a kilometre away and Dr. Krym’s car was in the shop, but because there were so many emergency vehicles on the scene she decided to walk there.
When Dr. Krym arrived, she saw that Santanna was critically injured—her pelvis and lower legs were crushed and one of the major blood vessels in one of her legs had opened up. Her blood pressure was very low. Sunnybrook was not the closest hospital, but “I knew it was her only chance of survival. She needed a trauma centre,” recalls Dr. Krym. “While we were speeding down the 401, I told the driver to notify Sunnybrook’s trauma team and tell them to be ready and waiting for us in the trauma room for our arrival.”
Santanna’s injuries were so severe, the health care team didn’t think she would live. “The injuries were clearly horrific and life threatening. She’d lost more than half her blood,” says Dr. Doreen Yee, the trauma team leader who directed Santanna’s care that night.
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Sunnybrook’s Tory Regional Trauma Centre provides care for patients suffering from a wide range of traumatic injury from motor vehicle collisions, stabbings and gunshot wounds, cycling and other recreational activities, and falls in the GTA and south central Ontario.
When Sunnybrook receives notice that a trauma is en route, it activates an internal network that draws the on-call trauma team composed of anaesthesiologists, orthopaedic surgeons, general surgeons, neurosurgeons, respiratory therapists and nurses to the trauma centre.
