Against all odds
Forty-three-year-old Brian Miller is a walking miracle. When he arrived at Sacred Heart Medical Center's Emergency Room on June 4, 2005, doctors did not think he would survive.
Today, after a two-week coma, 10 surgeries and a year of rehabilitation, Brian has not only survived, but has overcome the odds. He has no disabilities, no major pain and has returned to work as a quality assurance
engineer at Raytheon, which manufactures defense and aerospace systems for the U.S. government.
Brian, a resident of Maple Valley,Washington, had made the trek to Spokane last summer for a day of motorcycle racing. He and some friends had rented a local sports track so they could enjoy it all to themselves.
Brian's 140-hp motorcycle was configured like a racing bike and he was dressed in full leathers and an expensive helmet. While the rest of his group was finishing up lunch, he took the bike out for a solo run to "open it up."
No one saw him lose control–no one knows what happened. Their best guess, based on other occurrences at this particular track, is that he was hit by a bird. A friend who came out on the track to find Brian estimates he flew 80 yards before landing.
When he arrived at Sacred Heart, emergency room surgeon Mathew Rawlins,MD, orchestrated surgery in an effort to save Brian's life. When he called Brian's parents in Arkansas, he said there was very little chance Brian would be alive when they arrived.
Nancy Lowrey, RN, in Sacred Heart's Intensive Care Unit, was notified that Brian was coming to her unit. "I kept getting updates from Surgery and Radiology–they kept saying, 'He's not going to make it another five minutes, he won't be coming to your floor.'”
Eventually, he did make it to the ICU. "Nobody gave him any chance of living," Nancy recalls. "We had three RNs in the room and respiratory therapists and nursing assistants, all working on him as fast as we could go. Somehow or another, he made it to the change of our shift three hours later, and we thought that was a miracle."
His mother and father flew from Little Rock to Spokane immediately, not knowing they would end up staying in Washington with Brian for13 months.
"I was semi-hysterical," recalls his mother, Elaine. "I'm a nurse and Brian's dad is a doctor, so we understood the terms we were hearing when we arrived."
She continues, "Brian was on a ventilator. I could see cerebral spinal fluid running out of his ear [indicatingswelling of the brain] and his Glasgow coma scale was a three [the lowest score possible] — it was awful.We'd have been better off not understanding any of these things."
Surprisingly, Brian suffered no brain damage. Still, doctors did not think there was a chance he would ever gain functional abilities. After his 13-day coma, he remained on the ICU for four weeks. Then he spent July 5-20 on the orthopedic unit before leaving Spokane and returning to the West side where he spent another two weeks in a University of Washington rehabilitation facility.
He has no memories of his time in the ICU, but he has read the day-to-day email accounts his friends and coworkers shared. "When I read the emails, I think, 'Holy smokes, I was in bad shape,'" Brian recalls. Indeed, his injuries were devastatingly extensive. He suffered a skull fracture, trauma to the elbow and a severely twisted knee. His spleen was removed and he received donor ligaments in his knee, plus 16 screws and two plates in his left hand, not to mention a number of surgeries to correct double vision.
Elaine says, "We can't say enough about the care Brian received. We got to know his nurses and the supportive care for the family was amazing."
A year after his discharge from Sacred Heart, Brian returned to work part-time. Within three weeks, he was working full-time and overtime. "I have good cognitive function," Brian shares."My right knee doesn't flex well and there's a little numbness, but I don't walk with a cane anymore."
Perhaps more astounding, he has no major debilitating pain and simply takes an Advil every day to help reduce inflammation.
Now that life is somewhat back to normal, Brian says he is anxious to visit Sacred Heart and thank Dr. Rawlins for saving his life.
The folks in the ICU will be happy to see him, too.Nancy, the nurse who first cared for Brian when he arrived on the unit, says, "After 18 years of doing this, there are a few patients who stick out. Brian is definitely one of them."
This summer, Brian's mother sent a thank-you note to the ICU staff at Sacred Heart, along with a sequence of photographs of Brian in the ICU, then rehab, then walking and smiling, looking healthy as ever.
"We were totally blown away," shares Nancy. "I almost started crying — no one would have thought this was possible." She continues, "Sometimes we work with patients so much and know the odds are against them — and we never get a chance to see them doing this well. It makes me realize that I work with the best people in the whole wide world. If anyone in any of the departments who initially saw Brian had dropped the ball, he wouldn't have made it."
"He's definitely a patient we'll remember," Nancy adds. "He's a miracle."
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