Sunday, Oct. 8, 2017 | 2 a.m.
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Gunshot victims who require orthopedic surgery often face a longer road to healing, says an orthopedic surgeon at Sunrise Hospital who performed five surgeries the day after Sunday’s massacre.
Bullet injuries to bones take longer to heal than other gunshot wounds, Dr. David Silverberg said.
“The bullet causes injuries to the bone that can lead to the bone not healing,” Silverberg said. “They may need secondary procedures in the future to get the bone to heal. Even though they aren’t the most gravely injured, they often have the longest recovery.”
Silverberg arrived at the hospital at 7 a.m. and got to work right away.
“There was no usual good morning greeting, it was pretty intense,” Silverberg said. “A patient just came out of the operating room that had their belly opened, and one of the general surgeons came up to me and asked me to take a look at the bullet that had gone through their pelvis and was resting in their buttock.”
After that, he gathered his orthopedic colleagues and devised a game plan for the patients in need of immediate care.
The orthopedic surgery staff went through a list of 22 patients and divided them up among the five orthopedic surgeons.
“We kind of divided and conquered,” he said. “I started to see patients in the pre-op holding area and met with a woman who had a shattered femur. A bullet struck her femur bone.”
Despite the horrific scene from which the victims arrived, Silverberg said he was taken aback with how calm most of the patients were.
“I just saw a calmness about these people,” Silverberg said.,” he said. “I’m sure they were emotionally overwhelmed, and I’m sure that was a part of it. But I thought everybody was very brave. There were not a lot of hysterics.
The staff held together well, he said, with everybody being very businesslike.
Head injuries took precedence, and the neurosurgeons who worked on them showed the toll the work took.
There were four or five cubicles in the recovery room with a neurosurgeon in each one. “They looked exasperated by the whole ordeal,” Silverberg said. “Those were the most gruesome injuries. Those guys looked tired.
“They were saving lives, but they knew they had permanently injured patients.”
Despite not being at the hospital during the initial rush of patients, Silverberg heard stories from his colleagues about how bad it was.
“There were reports of people getting driven up in limos and five or six victims being pulled out of limos straight to the ER,” he said. “Also, in pickup trucks and ambulances carrying 10 at a time.”
In addition to watching the staff saving lives, Silverberg was also inspired by the heroic stories he heard from survivors — people putting themselves in harm's way, disregarding their own well-being.
Silverberg operated on one patient who had his left forearm ‘destroyed’ by a bullet. He was a fireman from California who saw an injured woman in dire need of help.
“As soon as the shots rang out, a person was stuck in the neck and was bleeding out,” Silverberg said. “He administered CPR and stayed with her, without knowing this person. He stayed in the line of fire to help the woman, and he was struck. You hear these stories, and you’re just enthralled with how people reacted.”
Silverberg said he wondered what he'd do in a similar situation and couldn’t imagine having to make that decision. “I look up to these people,” he said. “I see them as heroes — not patients.”
After treating victims of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history for the better part of a week, Silverberg said the team is feeling the effects.
“There’s a little bit of a hangover now,” he said. “Everybody wants to get together and have a group hug. Everybody is still working, but I think everybody looks at each other a little differently. … We have a bit more of a bond. It wasn’t business as usual for sure.”
