Bush's fault...
Posted on 01/03/2008 6:21:17 PM PST by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - Doctors say they have never seen anything like it: A window washer who fell 47 stories from the roof of a Manhattan skyscraper is now awake, talking to his family and expected to walk again.
Alcides Moreno, 37, plummeted almost 500 feet in a Dec. 7 scaffolding collapse that killed his brother.
Somehow, Moreno lived, and doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center announced Thursday that his recovery has been astonishing.
He has movement in all his limbs. He is breathing on his own. And on Christmas Day, he opened his mouth and spoke for the first time since the accident.
His wife, Rosario Moreno, cried as she thanked the doctors and nurses who kept him alive.
"Thank God for the miracle that we had," she said. "He keeps telling me that it just wasn't his time."
Dr. Herbert Pardes, the hospital's president, described Moreno's condition when he arrived for treatment as "a complete disaster."
Both legs and his right arm and wrist were broken in several places. He had severe injuries to his chest, his abdomen and his spinal column. His brain was bleeding. Everything was bleeding, it seemed.
In those first critical hours, doctors pumped 24 units of donated blood into his body — about twice his entire blood volume.
They gave him plasma and platelets and a drug to stimulate clotting and stop the hemorrhaging. They inserted a catheter into his brain to reduce swelling and cut open his abdomen to relieve pressure on his organs.
Moreno was at the edge of consciousness when he was brought in. Doctors sedated him, performed a tracheotomy and put him on a ventilator.
His condition was so unstable, doctors worried that even a mild jostle might kill him, so they performed his first surgery without moving him to an operating room.
Nine orthopedic operations followed to piece together his broken body.
Yet, even when things were at their worst, the hospital's staff marveled at his luck.
Incredibly, Moreno's head injuries were relatively minor for a fall victim. Neurosurgeon John Boockvar said the window washer also managed to avoid a paralyzing spinal cord injury, even though he suffered a shattered vertebra.
"If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one," said the hospital's chief of surgery, Dr. Philip Barie.
New York-Presbyterian has treated people who have tumbled from great heights before, including a patient who survived a 19-story fall, but most of those tales end sadly.
The death rate from even a three-story fall is about 50 percent, Barie said. People who fall more than 10 stories almost never survive.
"Forty-seven floors is virtually beyond belief," Pardes said.
Science may never be able to explain what protected Moreno when the platform he and his brother were using atop an Upper East Side apartment tower broke free and fell to the ground.
Edgar Moreno, 30, of Linden N.J., died instantly. He was buried in Ecuador, where the brothers are from.
Alcides Moreno, whom his wife described as strong and athletic, may have clung to his scaffolding platform as it dropped. It is possible that the metal platform offered him some protection, although doctors said they were unsure how.
An investigation into the cause of the accident continues.
Rosario Moreno said that her husband remembers little of the fall but that he didn't need to be told his brother had died.
The injured window washer spent about three weeks on a ventilator, unable to speak, and initially his only means of communication was by touch.
"He wanted to touch my face, touch my hair," Rosario Moreno said.
She would take his hand and hold it to her skin. Then, one day, he reached out and touched one of the nurses.
Rosario Moreno said that when she heard about it, she jokingly lectured her husband to keep his hands to himself. He answered in English, "What did I do?"
"It stunned me," she said, "because I didn't know he could speak."
There is still a rough road ahead for the tough New Jersey man, a father of three children, ages 14, 8 and 6.
He was scheduled to undergo another spinal surgery on Friday, and he will need another operation to reconstruct his abdominal wall. There is a chance he could develop complications, even life-threatening ones, during the months ahead.
Moreno will remain in the hospital for at least a few more weeks, doctors said. After that, he will need extensive physical rehabilitation. It may be another year before doctors know how much he will improve.
The medical staff was guarded Thursday about his prospects for returning to a normal life. Doctors said they believe he will walk, but they also suggested that some of his injuries are likely to be lifelong.
"We're optimistic for a very substantial recovery, eventually," Barie said
Rosario Moreno said she knows this much for sure: His days as a window washer are over. "I told him, 'You're not going back to work there,'" she said.
I wonder if he landed on his brother . . .
I agree. Excellent post.
I donate blood on a semi-regular basis.
I think it’s a good thing...no, a great thing to do that takes very little time and effort.
Bush's fault...
I am aware of that, but right now I am in a 10-year non-contribution window.
Goodness! Where did you go? (If I may ask)...
Goodness! Where did you go? (If I may ask)...
My hubby has fallen off the top of a 40’ pole a couple of times. I thought that was bad enough. But geez, 470’??!! I think I’d die just from the fear of the fall.
Prayers up!
The real miracle here is not the fall, but the medical knowledge, drugs, and technology available to anyone—key word anyone—experiencing a medical crisis in the U.S. Without it, this man almost certainly would have died. Just surprised no one posting here has thought to mention this.
I don’t want to throw a damper on all the high-fiving but at some point the cost of the care he received is going to have to be paid by someone. The extraordinary efforts taken to keep him alive will come with an extraordinary price tag.
Did he have private medical insurance? A lot of these window washing businesses must cover their employees with workers comp—but not much else.
The fact that your husband fell off of a 40 foot pole and survived once is a miracle, but twice? WoW, that's amazing. He must lead a charmed life because he's found favor with God. Three and a half feet laid me up for almost a year with several fractures and a broken tail bone.
I don’t know how he didn’t get seriously injured. The first time did jam his back up pretty bad and left his chest full of splinters. He hugged the pole part of the way down. He was back to work in 2 days.
The second time knocked him out. He came to to his buddy leaning over him, grinning. He said “I hope I bounce as good as you do when I fall off a pole”.
.................
With all jokes aside, hospitals and trauma centers are facing serious shortages. If you’ve never donate blood before, give it a try. If you haven’t donated in awhile, it’s time to do so again.
I've donated over 4 gallons to my local blood bank and at least another gallon to blood banks in places I used to live. It's amazing how much more detailed and intrusive the screening questions have gotten over the years. I think I'll wait another week or two till I've completely gotten over the cold I came down with on Xmas eve till I donate again.
I suspect he was on the dole in some way, it happening in New York.
I hate to say it, but I would rather that victims be treated with this extravagant care in an emergency, because I would hate to receive poor emergency care myself, just because my insurance card was lost or destroyed in the accident.
There is plenty of time later to see if a person should be on the ward or in a private room.
The guy held the board so tight his fingernails were embedded in the wood and were ripped out of his hand.
He never came back to work again.
There was a show just on that had footage of an F-18 crashing at an air show.
The Marine pilot survived the estimated 75G stop.
Had his face pushed in 1/2" by the stick when the harness snapped, and he went forward. They said that saved his life.
Walks with a cane now.
I think I saw a recommendation for suicide that the jump be at least eight stories.
I was under the impression the workers comp would get the tab for a work related injury, not the medical carrier.
I suspect that his terminal velocity was rather lower than normal, and that he was more or less riding the scaffolding...and then one end of the scaffolding hit and rotated, thus causing deceleration to happen over a number of feet rather than a simple splat of an inch or so. He even might have had some amazing inclined-plane effect.
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