Taylor Jackson shows off his motorcycle accident in 2010 (Submitted by Taylor Jackson)
Dr. Paul Patty knows that a young man can lose his life if he does not do something.
The ambulance he is in is racing to St. John’s, transporting a teenager who is in desperate need of draining blood from his recently injured brain.
Armed with a scalpel and a drill he borrowed from a maintenance man at William H. Newhook Municipal Health Center in Whitburn, Patty tells the paramedic driving to find a safe place to stop so he can punch a hole in the young man’s skull.
“I took the drill and put it on the bone,” Patty recalls.
“I took it out and the lush old blood started coming out like cranberry sauce.”
Dr. Paul Patty holds the drill used to drill a hole in Jackson’s head. (Jeremy Eaton / CBC)
Enjoying a warm day at a park in Marystown, Taylor Jackson, now 27, pushes his two boys, Roman, 4, and Carter, 8, on a swing with his wife.
He sat down to share his story as a warning story about the children he saw around town riding bicycles without their helmets.
“This is really not something I would wish on anyone else,” he said.
On July 16, 2010, the date Jackson had tattooed on his neck, the then 15-year-old jumped on his motorcycle without his helmet – which he said he usually wore, but not on this day – to pedal as fast as he could on the softball court in South Dildo.
“It was a big thing, summer softball,” Jackson said.
The game ended around noon and he jumped on his bike to go home. He pushed himself down the hill, and then it all came crashing down.
Jackson has another constant reminder of his accident, tattooed on the back of his neck. (Jeremy Eaton / CBC)
Bombarding a hill on a dirt road, he wasn’t sure what had happened, but his helmetless head went over the rudder and crashed into a rock.
“It all happened so fast,” Jackson recalled. “I broke my skull and I didn’t really know that.”
Somehow Jackson pulled away from the ground and, despite the great pain, managed to turn the pedals to his aunt’s house before his grandmother took him to the medical clinic in Whitburn.
“As soon as I arrived at my grandmother’s house, everything turned black. I can’t remember much. I went in and out of consciousness, “Jackson said.
“I woke up two weeks later to find out I had brain surgery and a plaque in my head.”
On July 16, 2010, Dr. Paul Patty was just a few hours away during his 24-hour locomotive shift at the William H. Newhook Municipal Health Center.
Patty, who officially retired a few years earlier, continued to pursue the job he loved, working as a family doctor in rural hospitals.
Retired Patty just showed up at Webern Medical Clinic that day in 2010 (Jeremy Eaton / CBC)
It’s something he did all over Newfoundland, but with Whitburn about an hour’s drive from his home in St. John’s, it was his favorite place to fill like a delicacy.
A graduate of McGill Medical School in the late 1960s, Patty had years of rural medical practice under his stethoscope, along with more than 25 years at the Memorial University Center for Health Sciences and Medical School. To stay busy, he offered to fill places in the countryside that needed a short doctor.
When Jackson’s grandmother left him in the hospital that July day, he immediately realized the gravity of the situation.
“I told the nurse, ‘We have a crash here,'” Patty said.
At that moment, Jackson was still conscious, but he could not speak. When the doctor asked him, he could not move his toes or toes on one side of his body.
Patty said the young man needed a CAT scanner and a team of doctors not available at Whitburn Health Center.
With an ambulance on the way from Smith’s nearby ambulances, Patty made sure she had everything she needed for the one-hour trip to Janeway Children’s Hospital in St. John’s.
Wear your helmet out of love to live, not out of fear of death – Dr. Paul Patty – Dr. Paul Patty
He grabbed a scalpel from the medical center and then asked a staff member to take a drill and some bits – if things went south with Jackson, he knew the 12-volt electric drill might be the only thing on board the ambulance to save a life. mu.
Patty explained that the brain must be in a protected space – the skull – but when there is damage to the skull and it fills with blood, there is not much space left.
“It’s squatting,” Patty said. “If you squat enough in the brain, you kill it.”
The first thing he did was make sure the drill was working.
“There’s no point in going down the road and finding a dead battery,” he said.
Thanks to Patty Jackson, he was able to spend more time with his family. (Jeremy Eaton / CBC)
With a paramedic in the back who joined a nurse from Whitburn Medical Center, they put Jackson in the ambulance and transferred her to St. John’s.
The experienced doctor knows that Jackson needs a hole in his brain to drain some of the blood, but the teenager is still conscious.
Patty tells the paramedic behind the wheel to get ready to stop, disinfect the drill – clean all the drywall from the last hole she drilled – and the three-man crew at the back start drilling.
While the nurse holds Jackson’s head, Patty uses a padded head protector to ensure it doesn’t pierce too far into the skull.
In reverse, Patti said that only a few weeks earlier he had shown his grandson how to drill holes in plywood clean to avoid clutter in his workshop.
Today, nothing prevents Jackson from doing what he loves. (Submitted by Taylor Jackson)
After Jackson’s heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, Patty began with an incision in Jackson’s scalp to gain clear access to the skull, with the paramedic pulling the scalp back and the nurse holding his head in place.
Quickly press the trigger on the electric drill – and you’re done.
“We knew we had reduced the pressure. Now we had another problem,” Patty said.
“We had bleeding in his head, but now it could come out through the hole, so the pressure wouldn’t get worse. [But] we had bleeding in his scalp because we had to make an awfully big incision. “
The clock ticked to take Jackson to St. John’s before he bled to death, which they did, greeted by a team from Janeway’s Emergency Department.
Few could do what Patty did, the colleague said
A former Patey’s colleague said there were very few doctors in the province who could do what he had done the other day.
But Patty takes very little credit, instead praising the paramedics and the Whitburn nurse and talking about the speed and organization of Jainway’s staff working on Jackson’s brain before stabilizing him.
Speaking near the 12th anniversary of the incident, Jackson is grateful to all who helped him. But he separates Patty.
“I am very grateful for this man,” he said.
Patty kept the drill that saved Jackson’s life. The doctor offered it to him, but he refused, saying the doctor should keep it as a reminder of an amazing day they met.
Spreading the helmet safety message
When the weather near his home in Lewin’s Cove, NL, began to warm up last summer, Jackson noticed many young people riding their bikes without wearing helmets.
Concerned by what he sees on the streets of his home on the Burin Peninsula, he posted on social media a photo of a bloody scar and a brief summary of how not wearing a helmet nearly cost him his life.
“It upsets me just because they don’t realize the importance of it,” Jackson said.
“Some people don’t think it’s cool, but the scar I got on the side of my head isn’t really cool either. It will just put their parents in a very bad situation that I would not wish on anyone.
Jackson watches his two sons run through Burin Park, two boys who have it in their heads to protect themselves with their helmets.
He does not feel any bad consequences from what happened.
Jackson works offshore, plays hockey (he’s even his team’s goalkeeper) and drives an ATV – always wearing a helmet.
He spent 35 days in hospital recovering and had to learn how to speak and walk again. When school started in September, Jackson was there.
Love of life, not fear of death
“A lot of people in these incidents don’t get away with it,” Jackson said.
“Some people are not so lucky, especially with this type of injury.”
Patty also knocks out Jackson’s message: helmets are needed.
“The best reason to wear a helmet is because you want to live a long, happy life,” Patty said.
“Look at Taylor. He has another 12 years of good life since he had a hole in his head. People who put on their helmets now may have 12 years of life with less chance of punching a hole in their head.
“So wear your helmet out of love to live, not out of fear of death.”
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