On Tuesday, Clinton Grant’s father recalled the bloody scene when his 3-year-old son had become enticed by his grandfather’s gun pouch left out on the dresser. It took only minutes for the boy to shoot himself in the stomach.
Grant detailed how he rushed his son to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, and then offered his appreciation to the doctors, nurses and staff who performed multiple operations and kept him alive during his two weeks in the hospital.
“I want to say thank you to everybody,” Grant said. “That day was a blur. I took my eyes off him for two seconds and all I heard was ‘pow.’ My ears were ringing and I turned around and saw him running. I grabbed him and I checked him out and I shook … straight to the truck, straight to the hospital.”
Grant looked out at the nurses, doctors and hospital workers gathered in a conference room for Memorial Regional Hospital’s Trauma Awareness Day Celebration.
“That day plays in my head, and I’ve just got to say thank you to the people here who helped out,” Grant said. “I don’t know what I would do with myself if I couldn’t save his life, but they did it for me, and I want to say thank you.”
Cindy Krischer Goodman
Clint Grant Jr., a 4-year-old who survived a gunshot wound, with his surgeon Dr Noor Kassira. (Cindy Krischer Goodman/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Clinton Grant Jr., now 4, was among at least two dozen adult and children trauma patients treated at Memorial Regional Hospital or Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood who returned to receive survivor medals. They had suffered from a variety of severe injuries, including car crashes, motorcycle crashes, gunshot wounds, and even a plane crash. Their stories are harrowing.
Jacob Estrada, 7, had survived a horrific car crash that happened after he left school. He suffered a brain injury, cardiac injury, and liver and abdominal injuries, as well as multiple fractures. His mother, who was pregnant, died upon impact in the crash.
Estrada spent 67 days in Joe DiMaggio, 50 of them in the intensive care unit. He continues to undergo physical therapy and will need another operation to remove the flex nails in his arm and leg.
On Tuesday, Estrada smiled wide as pediatric trauma surgeon Tammy Levene placed a survivor’s medal around his neck. He later played chase around the room with Sean Pratt of Miramar Fire Rescue, who had treated him on the scene and brought him to the hospital.
“We drove as fast as we could to Memorial and worked him in the back on the way,” Pratt recalled. “Tough kid. Now seeing him walk around is just unbelievable.”
Trauma surgeon Niqui Kiffin said the annual Trauma Awareness Day Celebration helps her appreciate her job more.
“We see trauma every single day, and most of the time we see patients at their worst and the families at their absolute worst,” Kiffin said. “On a day-to-day basis you kind of wonder what you are doing and why you are here. Are you really helping somebody?”
Kiffin notes that even when patients leave, most are on their way to rehab. “They are still not walking, or getting fed with a feeding tube. Today is the one day of the year we get to see patients and their families come in looking healthy, looking happy, so it’s extremely meaningful. Every year it resets us to remind us why we do this.”
Memorial has had a trauma center for 32 years. For 25 of those years it has been designated a Level 1 Trauma Center, which means it is capable of providing total care for every aspect of injury — from prevention through rehabilitation. Joe DiMaggio is a Level 2 Pediatric Trauma Center.
The two trauma centers treated more than 4,000 people in 2022. Luke Fransisco, 12, a Joe DiMaggio patient, survived being struck by a bus while crossing the street. J. Bautista, a Memorial patient, survived gunshot wounds while on duty as police officer. And Megan Bishop, 35, survived an accident in Pembroke Pines in which a plane crashed into her car and killed her only child.
Dionny Baez, 43, said he never would have imagined needing the nurses and doctors in the trauma center when he went spearfishing with a friend off Dania Beach.
As he choked back tears Tuesday, Baez described swimming in the ocean and getting run over by a speedboat. Baez suffered multiple fractures, and injuries to his liver and diaphragm. He received blood at the scene by EMS and had surgery immediately upon arrival at the trauma center in December 2021.
“I’m so happy to be here today, because it was very, very close for me,” he said. “The care and the way they put all their efforts to save someone’s life as if it were their own … I didn’t believe it until I experienced it.”
Moise Brutus, 33, considers himself recovered after 13 years, but still remembers his time at Memorial. He was in a motorcycle crash and suffered traumatic amputation of three limbs when he was 20 years old. He went on to compete in the Paralympics for cycling, completed college, and has a successful career in accounting.
Brutus said he still thinks about waking up from his motorcycle accident 13 years ago and asking: “Did they put me back together?”
He recalls a Memorial Regional nurse responding with a line he still thinks of years later: “All you need is your head and your heart.”
Sandra Sneed, chief operating officer of Memorial Regional Hospital, said she’s convinced the hospital’s trauma surgeons with their skills and compassion and the teams of people in the hospital who participate in recovery are the reason why so many of the injured survive. “If there is any chance of saving your life, they will do it for you.”
Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Krischer Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com.