Their Misfortune Saved My Sister’s Life

Someone else tragically lost their life years ago but the incident saved my sister’s life about 10 years later.

Several years ago, my sister and I were in a car accident. I had visible injuries, she did not and was walking around without any problems, so we thought. Nine days later, she was preparing dinner, began to feel ill, vomited and then passed out. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital emergency and after talking to my brother-in-law for only a couple of minutes, he rushed my sister into surgery and removed her spleen immediately, it had ruptured in the accident but was a slow bleed.

My sister was in ICU for a couple of weeks but survived and is in good health today. Later, the admitting trauma surgeon said he recognized what was happening because of a mistake his college professor told the class she made as a surgeon years earlier.

A teenage boy had fallen from a cliff and hit rocks below, other than being bruised he was fine so did not seek medical help. Seven days later he was brought unconscious into ER, where the college professor was working as a surgeon at the time. She and her team were not able to quickly identify his symptoms of a ruptured spleen that had happened 7 days ago. The teenage boy died about an hour later.

She was always sure to share this particular incident with her students, thus saving my sister’s life when one of her former students (my sister’s doctor) showed up to class that day!