Byron’s Story: Police Officer Survives Highway Crash 

Brittany: I kept telling myself over, "He's probably dead." Why else would they come out, all the way out here tonight to pick me up in these horrible conditions, and ...

Speaker 2: They drop a tone for a pedestrian strike on the highway. I'm thinking to myself, "Who in their right mind is on the highway in this weather?" Had no inclination, didn't even cross my mind that it'd be a police officer responding to a crash.

Brittany: I heard a knock at the door. It's like, after midnight, and it took me a while to wake up. I went to the spare room, and looked out the window. I saw it was a police car.

Speaker 2: I know it's not probably right to think, but it's crossing through my mind, "I hope it's not one of ours."

Brittany: They said, "Are you Brittany?" I said, "Yes." They said, "Byron's been in an accident, but he's okay. We don't have any other information. We need you to come with us."

Speaker 2: He was in and out of consciousness, but he was still with us, and that was all I really cared about. I just wanted to get his head patched up, because I had never seen an injury like that before. I wasn't sure what I was dealing with, what I was looking at. Officer Dustin Doughty came running over with the first aid kit, and his partner, Officer Daniel O'Neil, he's standing next to me. I'm on the ground, he's standing next to me. He says, "This leg is bad. We need to put a tourniquet on it." He's just standing there with the tourniquet in his hand, and I just reached up and took it from him and started strapping it onto Byron's leg.

I actually said, "Let's load him up and take him to Valley on the side of the road." I know it's a given. That kind of injury, you're going to Miami Valley. I know where we're going. Everyone knows where we're going. It didn't matter where we were in the city, they'd be going to Miami Valley for that type of injury.

Speaker 3: He was noted to have a very severe injury to his right lower extremity, what we many times would refer to as a mangled extremity. It was an open fracture. His tibia and fibula on the right leg were broken, and was an open wound. He was actively bleeding.

Brittany: When the doors open and I walk up the ramp, there's probably 20, 25 police officers, Dayton police officers, lined up and down the ramp staring at me.

Speaker 3: It was determined, unfortunately, that the extremity, his right leg, was just too damaged, that could not be salvaged at that point. He underwent an amputation. Sometimes we have to make that very difficult decision. Sometimes we call it life over limb. Dr. Wallace [Sim-bee 00:03:43], one of my colleagues, went out to the waiting room to tell Byron's wife, Brittany, that they could not salvage the leg.

Brittany: He comes and sits right by me. I turn, and he says, "Byron is going to be okay, but we had to amputate his leg." I said, "Okay." I was thinking for like two hours that he was dead, so I was like, "We can deal with an amputation." Whatever else comes is going to be easy compared to what I thought was going on.

Speaker 2: Once they moved us up to the lambency intensive care unit, we were able to get in and just get a peek at him. They assured me the head wound is a laceration, but he doesn't have any brain damage. All major organs are fine. He's going to lose his leg. That starts bringing a little bit of peace to me. I mean, he's going to live. Just having known Byron for, at that point, just a little over a year, I knew he was one of the most resilient people that I'd ever met. This wasn't going to stop him.

Speaker 3: A lot of things came together, but the fact is that the different components that came together for him are things that have been very well thought out and planned. The design of our hospital, and the trauma center, something that has been very well thought of, tried, tested throughout the years. The way our teams function, and the ways we continuously try to improve, and this was an example of the team, trauma team, at a level one center working together.

Byron: 95% of recovery is mental. Five percent is physical. I've always had a pretty solid mental outlook on everything. I tend to be extremely pragmatic about how I think about things and how I live my life. I looked at it, and I decided I'm not going to focus on what I can't do. I'm only going to focus on what I can do. What I can do is recover and get back to work. I'm one of those people, I really know who I am and what I'm capable of. For that reason, I didn't ever see there being a problem with me being able to be right back where I was prior to being injured.

Brittany: My daughter was 10 months at the time of Byron's accident. She pretty much learned to walk with his walker. She was walking before him, but the walker has the lower handles, and she stood up in there. She now likes Byron to take her on wheelchair rides around our house, and she waves like she's in a parade. She has no idea. She sees his leg and says, "Daddy."

Speaker 3: Apart from being very physically fit, I think more importantly Byron was very motivated and had such a wonderful attitude and an outlook, and had the view that he was going to make it through this.

Brittany: He's great. He's great. I don't think we could ask for anything better. I honestly don't think, aside from the accident, I don't think we could have asked for anything more.

Speaker 2: If I'm the one that is in need of critical care, I hope that either in the back of the police car or in the back of an ambulance, I hope I'm getting taken to Miami Valley.

Brittany: I think Miami Valley did great. We had so many nurses that we really loved on every unit. I can't remember their names, I can see their faces, but they were so ... They took great care of us. They took great care of him, and they took care of me. They put up with the tons of family members and police officers in the lobby.

Byron: Thanks for helping me when I needed it. That's the least and the most we can ask for people, or ask from people, is just to be there when you need them.