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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (KOAA) — A little girl who is too young to fully understand she is lucky her dad is alive watched as her father returned to UCHealth Memorial Hospital to greet the team that saved him with smiles and hugs.
“Every time I think about, ‘Hey, I’m so grateful to be here for my daughter,’ I just think about how many people it took to get me here,” said accident survivor Cowboy Lopez.
“In a really bad situation, I’ve come out really good. I feel like really blessed, blessed by the best, I say,” said Lopez.
The phrase “really bad situation” is an understatement.
“I was dead a few times for sure,” said Lopez.
“He was mostly dead,” said UCHealth Memorial trauma surgeon Dr. Brian Leininger.
“Outcomes like this are a true testament to the hours of training that we put in every year. It’s a testament to the system that we have in the city,” said Colorado Springs Firefighter Paramedic Lt. Joshua Buck.
Working on a skid loader at his shop TrueFixAuto, in an instant, Lopez was trapped under body-crushing weight from it.
“The hydraulics collapsed, and then the bucket is what fell on top of my back,” said Lopez. “The realization of what had happened and the amount of pain I was in was almost unbearable.”
“It broke most of the bones in his chest, collapsed one of his lungs, caused serious internal bleeding in his abdomen, major damage to his pelvis,” said Dr. Leininger. “The injury also suffocated him because the weight had been sitting on his chest long enough that he could not breathe and blood could not circulate.”
A lot aligned that day for help to happen in rapid succession.
The accident happened less than a mile from Fire Station 8 near South Academy Boulevard. The firefighters happened to already be at their truck, and the medical lieutenant in a mobile unit with whole blood was already in the area, just two to three minutes away.
Whole blood carried by Colorado Springs firefighters was added to trauma protocol a little more than two years ago.
Out of a little more than 200 cases where it has been given, Lopez’s is among the worst-case scenarios.
“Out of all of the drugs that we carry, hundreds of drugs, this is one that has an immediate impact that you can see,” said Buck.
“To have a shot at doing anything for him, he had to not be dead when he got here, and the fact that the firefighters and the medics were able to give him whole blood, I believe, is why he arrived here alive,” said Dr. Leininger.
Even with the blood, doctors say Lopez was actively dying when he arrived at the hospital. The skill of UCHealth Memorial’s emergency department team made way for several trauma surgeons to work on countering his injuries.
“We figure out what is the biggest threat to the patient’s life right at that moment and we address that, and then once we’re satisfied with that, we move on to the next thing and the next thing,” said Dr. Leininger.
A half dozen surgeries, months in the hospital, and more than a year of rehab followed. Firefighters, doctors, nurses and therapists are the reason he is telling his story.
“When you have had so many injuries that you never know if you’re going to be the person you were before, and in a lot of ways, I’m not,” said Lopez.
“He got hurt so badly that he needed just about every single thing that Memorial had,” said Dr. Leininger.
A man whose expertise is car repair experienced firsthand what it takes to fix people.
“They [the medical staff] would come in for their job, but whenever they were in that room with me, it just felt like they were my aunt or my sister or a family member caring for it,” said Lopez. “I had no idea what whole blood was, but I certainly do now.”
Lopez thanks his higher power and the dozens of pros on the UCHealth Memorial team who were determined to help him live after dying.
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