In the space of one long, painful day, Julie Weaver saw both the bad and good sides of humanity.
The bad came just before dawn on a recent morning when she looked out the second-story window of her Mira Mesa home and saw her pickup truck being stolen. Without thinking, the 33-year-old wife and mother of two ran downstairs and out on the street to see which direction the thief had gone.
The vehicle had stopped at the end of the street. She couldn't see anyone in the truck so she approached the vehicle and opened the driver's door. unfortunately, the thief was inside, bent over and possibly rifling the glove compartment.
Impulsively, Weaver reached in to grab the master key the thief had used to start the truck. Suddenly, the thief pinned her hand against the ignition and floored the accelerator. The truck smashed into a brick retaining wall and caused injuries that nearly took Weaver's life. As she lay in a pool of blood, the theif escaped.
—Dr. Keith Wahl, Surgeon at
Scripps Memorial Hospital
Thankfully, that is where the good began. Taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital-La Jolla's Trauma Center, Weaver was put in the best possible hands. But in this case, the hands of that talented trauma team were full. For starters, Weaver suffered a facial separation from her skull, the worst possible facial fracture; her eye sockets, jaw and cheek bones were shattered. Her right ear was nearly severed, she suffered a dislocated broken shoulder and rib, and a deep groin wound that just missed a major artery.
"She looked terrible when she came in," said Keith Wahl, M.D., Scripps Memorial plastic surgeon. "She was on the operating table 18 hours. Reconstructing her face was like trying to fix a broken eggshell. The gash in her groin was very serious. One millimeter deeper and Julie would not have made it."
Wahl was one oseveral specialists called in by John Cherry, M.D., the Scripps Memorial trauma surgeon who led the team responsible for Weaver's initial care.
With plates and screws holding her face together, julie did make it and she has begun a long recovery she hopes will get her back to her job of helping her husband run a hobby store. She says she has learned two valuable lessons.
"I should never have tried to stop the guy. I should have called the police. It was a mistake I hoep people will learn from my experience never to make," Weaver says.
She also learned the value of emergency care by a team specifically trained to deal with infuries like hers.
"I'm so thankful I was taken to Scripps Memorial," Weaver says. "They did a tremendous job first to save my life and then to do as much as they could to put me back together so that eventually I can come close to being the way i was before this all happened. I really believe that I might not be here today if I hadn't received such great car from the Scripps Memorial trauma team." •