This guy lost a finger
Submitted by jstudent on Tue, 2006-04-25 22:00. Colin Coyle knows all about the high cost of medical insurance.
His pinkie-less right hand and his fractured credit history are constant reminders of the steep medical costs that can mount if a serious accident occurs when an individual is not covered under a health insurance plan.
Coyle lost the finger in a traffic accident on March 24, 2001 on Trenton Road in Fairless Hills, just after the Yardley resident had started a new job in New York City. What follows is his first-person story. - ED
My accident was March 24, 2001. I was 20 years old at the time; living in Yardley and working in New York City. I had gotten laid off January 1 of 2001 and was unemployed until landing the job in NYC, which started at the end of February. I had been at my new job just shy of 30 days.
The accident occured in Fairless Hills on Trenton Rd. I had just dropped a friend off at the dentist, his sister was along for the ride to listen to a new CD I had picked up the night before. She and I were heading back to her house. It was around noon on a Saturday. I was on her street and U-turning to park at the curb in front of her house. Coming up behind us was a Ford Expedition. As I started my U-Turn, the driver of the expedition thought I was pulling off to the right side of the road. She planned to pass me on the left. The result of this mistake was that she "T-Boned" my car on the center line of the road. My car was pushed to the far curb before it came to a stop.
I lost consciousness for a few minutes after the impact. I came to because the driver of the other car was screaming into her phone, just outside my window which had been open. There was a blue-ish haze in the air from the airbag and the car was a total wreck. The SUV had hit us right on the frame of the car between the front and rear driver's side doors. The windshield was spidered and the instrument panel was ruined; everything inside the dashboard was shifted almost a foot toward the passenger's side of the car. There was debris all over the inside of the car, including the oval Ford medallion from the grille of the other vehicle.
At the time of the impact I was performing a U-turn and was turning the wheel hand-over-hand. My right hand was caught between the steering wheel and the door when we were hit. The steering wheel itself was crushed into a "D" shape. Most of my hand was clear of the wheel because of the impact, but my right pinky was caught at the tip.
The result was that my finger was "de-gloved" (medical term).
The skin was completely removed from my finger, having been torn off at the base where the finger meets the hand. Also, the top bone of the finger remained in the skin and was also torn off. The most serious part of the damage was that the tendon was torn off with the skin and bone. The tendon connects back to the muscles in the hand and is what actually moves the finger.
The first words I remember hearing were from a passerby who had stopped when he saw the accident. I believe he was a doctor of some sort on his way to work, but I can't clearly recall. He came up to my window, looked in and said:
"Holy shit, you're alive!"
At that point, I had yet to notice the damage to my hand, I was only aware of some stiffness in my neck, very sharp pain in my left shoulder and foot, and gritty dust in my mouth that later turned out to be tiny chips of teeth. My passenger noticed that my hand was bleeding and asked if I was okay. I looked down, saw a red mass where my finger should have been, and did my best to cover it from her view with my other hand. Much like movie cliches, blood was squirting from my finger in regular intervals and painting the dashboard.
She told me she was okay and I asked her to go to her house and dial 911. The doctor had already done so, but her parents had come out of the house by this time and she went to them. The doctor asked if there was anyone I'd like to call, so I gave him my parents' phone number. He explained briefly to my father that I had been in an accident and held the phone to my ear so that I could speak to him.
My Father: "Colin, are you okay?"
Me: "I'm sorry dad, the car's totalled."
My Father: "I'm coming now, are you okay?"
Me: "I think I lost a finger. I'm sorry about the car, dad."
My Father: "I'm on my way, I'll be there soon."
My Father: "I'm on my way, I'll be there soon."
Around this time, police started arriving. The first cop on the scene tried to open my door, but couldn't. The damage to the dashboard had fairly well pinned my legs so that I couldn't crawl across to the passenger side. The cop got into the passenger side of the car and wrapped my finger in gauze to stop the bleeding. He also placed a collar on my neck so that I couldn't move it, in case there was damage to my spine. Paramedics and volunteer fire fighters arrived next. They began the slow work of cutting off the driver's side door so that I could be removed from the car. I don't know exactly how long this took, but my house is 15 minutes from the accident scene and they were still working on removing the door when my father arrived. Once the door was removed, the missing portion of my finger was found stuck to it and placed in a bag of ice, in hopes that it could be re-attached. At my father's request, I was given the bag to hold onto - this way there was no chance it would be lost. At this point, I was still in a state of shock and felt no pain whatsoever in my hand, nor did I really realize that a good portion of my finger was in a Ziploc bag of ice on my lap.
Eventually, I was removed from the car, placed on a board, loaded into an ambulance, and taken to St. Mary's Medical Center in Newtown. The ER nurses pumped me full of morphine, cut off my clothes, cleaned out my numerous scrapes and bruises, and sent me for X-Rays of more or less every inch of my body and a CT Scan of my brain to look for any damage there. They also removed the gauze wrapping the finger and cleaned and inspected that.
After an initial two hours of bustle and activity, the nurses and doctors let me be to wait for the plastic surgeon to come in for consultation. I had been informed that the CT Scan showed no damage to my brain, the pain in my foot was due to swelling from the impact and there appeared to be no damage, and my left shoulder was also swollen and showed some minor damage to the tendons and ligaments; all of those would heal with rest and physical therapy.
It seemed the "partial amputation" and "de-gloving" of my right pinky was the worst of the damage. My right hand was still wrapped in the original bandaging, elevated and felt extremely cold. Due to the injuries in my left shoulder, I couldn't lift my arm more than a few inches off the bed, so my father ended up having to feed me my hospital dinner that afternoon.
Four hours later, someitme after 6 p.m., the plastic surgeon arrived. The severed portion of my finger was still on ice in my lap. He had a nurse remove the bandages so that he could examine the wound. By this point, the shock had worn off and I was keenly aware of the pain, even through the morphine. Also, the bandages had not been removed in 4 hours and had stuck tightly to my finger from the drying of the blood. The pain of the removal was unimaginable. Even now, I can't really describe it adequately. Two of my friends were in the room when the nurse began removing the wrappings, but had to leave because they couldn't watch the pain I was going through. The best I can say is to imagine your skin being slowly peeled off of your hand. The pain only got worse once the bandages were removed, as the shapeless lump attached to my hand was bleeding anew and the exposure to the air was causing a burning sensation not unlike pepper in the eye.
At that time, the plastic surgeon informed me that there was just too much damage to reattach the skin or the amputated portion of my finger. He recommended a "skin flap" procedure, in which they would sew my hand to my stomach and wrap skin from the stomach around what remained of my finger. Over about a month, the skin would attach itself to my finger. This was, he told me, mostly cosmetic as I no longer had a tendon. Without the tendon, I would never be able to move the finger. I asked if there were other options and he told me it was my best, so I agreed.
I'll fast forward here a bit.
I spent two days at St. Mary's. On the second day, I asked to be transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Center City, as they had a Hand Center and some of the best hand surgeons in the country. St. Mary's wouldn't readily allow me the transfer, as they said they were perfectly capable of handling the procedure there and I had to leave "Against Doctor's Advisement."
If I had medical insurance, this would mean that they wouldn't have paid for any of the time or procedures performed at Jeff. I guess it's almost a good thing I didn't have medical insurance.
Jeff would only take me if I was transported in an ambulance, so they sent one up. The ride was hell, despite the pain killers the paramedics were administering. My entire body had gone stiff from the after-effects of being hit by a half-ton vehicle moving at 40 mph and every bump in the road was a new flavor of discomfort. The worst of it was the severe sensitivity in my right hand from the swelling (each of my fingers were black and blue and almost twice their normal size) and from the partial amputation.
The Jeff surgeons informed me that if I went through with the "skin flap" procedure, the motionless finger would be extremely sensitive to pain for the rest of my life. With this new little bit of info, I asked him to remove the rest of the finger. The Doc agreed with me that it was the best decision. Three more times the finger was unwrapped - each just as painful as the time the plastic surgeon did it at St. Mary's.
I was sent home and my surgery was scheduled for Friday, March 30.
I spent three days or so at home with my hand wrapped and most of my skinless finger still attached. A member of my family still had to help me get in and out of bed, get dressed and eat. I slept on a pull-out sofa in the living room because I was too stiff and swollen to go up and down stairs.
Finally, I underwent a "revision amputation," a rather fast procedure that removed the rest of the finger. My surgeon, Dr. Taras, is considered one of the top three hand guys in the country, so there is little scarring today. It was another month before I returned to work - earlier than I would've liked.
Here's the kicker about the whole thing. My medical insurance didn't start until March 26, two days after my accident. So they covered nothing, not a penny of the medical costs. My disability insurance didn't start until the 26th either, so I used my vacation and sick days (10 days total) all a month after starting. The remaining time I was out recovering (somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 work days) was uncompensated. I went about a month without a paycheck. For the six months after, I had to take a day off work each week to visit the doctor and get physical therapy for my hand and shoulder. I didn't get any pay for those days off, either.
My car insurance footed some of the medical bills, around $10,000. The one-hour surgery itself to perform the revision amputation cost $7,000. The total of my medical bills (including two ambulance rides, six months of rehab, four days in the hospital, one amputation, a dozen X-Rays, and two CT Scans) was $22,000 dollars.
I was responsible for $12,000.
To cap it off, I filed a lawsuit against the other driver in 2001. It finally went to court in 2004. I lost the case and had to pay $5,000 to my attorney for the costs associated with the suit and the hiring of an accident reconstructionist to testify on my behalf. That brought the total cost of the accident, out of pocket, to $17,000.
I was coming off two months of being unemployed and still paying rent on an apartment in Northeast Philly, so I had no savings at all. It took me four years to pay off the bills, including the attorney's costs. My credit is still wrecked from the years of carrying such a high amount of debt. I tried to finance a $20,000 car six months ago with $5,000 down and was told I needed to come up with more.
While I recover from the debt and try and rebuild my credit, I am all-but forced to continue living with my parents.
I'm now 25 years old and I am a very cautious driver. :P
-Colin Coyle
