Trauma Survivors Meet Their Doctors And Nurses

Trauma survivors meet their doctors and nurses Houston Chronicle Copyright 2012 Houston Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Published 08:27 p.m., Monday, May 14, 2012 After months of surgery, pain and physical therapy, fretting about a golf handicap is a luxury. The event allows people to meet with the surgeons, emergency center doctors, nurses and other first-responders who helped to save their lives. Former Houston police officer Lloyd Morrison will be there, too, walking with a limp and a cane, but walking, despite the drunken driving chain reaction accident that crushed his legs and nearly severed his right arm in 2009. Morrison had been in law enforcement for 26 years and hadn't suffered any injury more serious than slipping on the courthouse stairs. Morrison talked to firefighters on the scene and had ducked into his patrol car to get the case number when his car was hit by a second driver. Sandy Morrison, a former trauma nurse, wasn't angry, but it took all of her professional skills to oversee her husband's recovery during five weeks in Ben Taub, including 13 surgeries and 36 units of blood. The emotional toll remains raw for both of them, reignited every time another police officer is killed or injured in a drunken driving accident. Reitz was taken to Ben Taub with a traumatic brain injury, a crushed pelvis, a broken sternum, collapsed lungs and a broken femur.