In our last post from our interview with Jennifer McCabe Gorman of the Health 2.0 movement and Health2con.com we hear about her own incredible journey of recovery from physical trauma and pain and how she utilized the internet to help navigate and motivate her through it all.

You can find Part 1 here:

http://www.sugarstats.com/2008/10/11/interview-with-jennifer-mccabe-gorman-pt-1-of-3-background-on-health-20/

and Part 2 here:

http://www.sugarstats.com/2008/10/17/interview-with-jennifer-mccabe-gorman-pt-2-improving-patient-care-through-health-information-technology-hit/

Nedrra Lanakila (N): So MUCH to explore with you. You are to be commended on your earnest efforts! I’ve got to hear the upshot to your personal story: how long, and what happened to you?

Jennifer McCabe Gorman (JMG): I had to. I was 20 years old and my leg was at stake. I didn’t feel like I had any choice at the time. What was I going to do, give up? No way!

Well, the upshot is an amazing, miraculous recovery. When I’m home in the states I will send you a photo of me after the first few surgeries, with a 15 pound external fixator on my right lower leg (like the halo you see on people with broken necks).

N: Okay. Wait. Stop. Backup.

NOW you’ve got to share just a bit about the actual accident please? If you are too sensitive about it I totally understand and support that.

JMG: No, it’s totally cool. Sharing our testimonials, our personal histories of diagnosis, crisis, recovery – all these enable our individual and collective healing. It’s cathartic.

The short version: I was 20 years old. I’d just gotten a scholarship to study for my junior year abroad at St. Andrews University in Scotland, a big deal for a kid from Southern Maryland!

I was working 2 jobs to save up, training hard at the gym. I went to a friend’s party on Memorial Day weekend, his house was about 40 minutes from my parents.

When I drove home, I remember being so tired that the lights by the road were fuzzy.

About 1/4 mile from my mom’s house, I fell asleep behind the wheel of my red Saturn.

I drifted across 2 lanes of traffic and hit an 8 foot iron ship’s anchor dead on.. lol – when I do something I do it big!

It’s a very rural area, and this farm had a ship’s anchor at the edge of a field and a long dirt driveway.
I picked a good place though, because on one side was an oak tree, and the other was a telephone pole.

JMG: Miraculously, the car didn’t speed up, and I didn’t hit anyone else. The impact was about 50 mph. I drove the anchor on it’s side a bit, and the engine block in the car crushed up around me.

Apparently, I woke up when I hit the anchor (I don’t really remember), but couldn’t get out of the car. The block crushed my right leg only, because I had a standard (stick) transmission, and had tried, instinctively, to stop the car.

I only remember bits and pieces. I woke up, looked down and saw my right knree like a blooming onion with bits of bone and seatbelt and all kinds of stuff. Well, bleck. I couldn’t see my right foot because it was twisted completely around.

I was bleeding quite a bit and remember trying to get out of the car since I knew that was a bad thing. But I kept passing back out.

Unbelievably someone was watching out for me. An 18 year old kid named Denny Gibson (I don’t know him: I heard this way after the accident) was walking home from a party.

He heard me screaming and ran up. Then he followed the driveway close to where I crashed, to a house where the owners didn’t believe him. They thought he was some robber punk kid and called the cops.

The MD State Police arrived first, called ambulance immediately. They cut me out of the car and rushed me to our local ER.

Thank god we had good orthopedic docs in our local hospital, who just kind of flushed out the wounds, ‘fixated’ the ankle (turned the foot back around), wrapped me up, and sent me up to Shock Trauma at UMMC in Baltimore.

I was there for 5 days. I kept waking up and asking everyone in sight if I still had my right leg.

Needless to say, everything after that was a moment of celebration followed by concern. Yes, my leg is still here. What happens next? No one really knows. We’ll have to just see.

I ran a 5k 2 years after my accident. Two summers ago, I finished a sprint triathalon at Lums Pond in Delaware. I swam 1/2 mile, bike 12 miles, and ran 3.2 miles ( a5k). This is after 16 surgical procedures.

I work out at the gym regularly, and have a neat, characteristic limp (only after a really long, intense day) and some sweet scars. Unless I tell the story of my injury, most people never know.

N: Oh. My. God.

JMG: It’s not as bad as it sounds. Faith, and family, and the WEB helped me get through. I have been so blessed, I can’t even say.

N: Give me a moment to recover. I was breathing through a clenched fist over my mouth and nose.

So after the doc told you to ‘pray’, you discovered online supportive communities and online medical info.

JMG: Exactly. I learned from someone on mybrokenleg.com that infection was a primary concern after an injury of this type.

Then I went back to the hospital and requested my operative notes (the dictation doc does after surgery).

Sure enough “exquisite risk of infection.” So we were extra vigilant about that. It’s like Amy Tenderich’s blog post a while back at Diabetes Mine about being at a party where she’s touching sugary stuff, then takes her glucose, but forgot to wash her hands.

This is stuff most docs will forget to tell you, because they aren’t LIVING with this thing.

Also, it can be the tiniest, seemingly insignificant portion of advice or information a community member gives you that can be the most valuable.

When I had an ex-fixator, someone at the hospital (Kernan, in Baltimore, specializes in ortho rehab), told me that Adidas made track pants with snaps all the way up the sides (easy to put on and take off over the contraption on my right leg stabilizing the fractures).

Just being able to dress MYSELF made a huge difference in how I felt about recovery. Seems dumb when you try to convey the value that has, but someone who has been there ‘gets it’.

N: Yeah. I get it. But that’s another story!

That’s truly incredible and inspiring. Thank you for stepping forward to share it with the SugarStats Community. I know that our community will ‘get’ the resolve you had within yourself not to get beaten by what the doctors initially said to you, or the condition you were in.

You tapped into self-determinism and found ways for life to be sweet again and full again and vibrant.

N: So never take never as the prognosis.

JMG: Indeed. That’s an intensely personal approach to ‘medicine’ in which we try to ‘beat’ disease and ignore the severity. You can’t run from that. You have to choose to face it head on.

Or avoid it. But what makes you safer? Definitely facing it to whatever degree you personally can handle.

N: Congratulations! What a fantastic story and an ‘ending’. Definitely leaves us wanting to know more about you and Health 2.0.

JMG: Thanks Nedrra, it’s funny – I feel like I’m just beginning. Health 2.0 is what’s enabling me to meet amazing people like Marston (Marston Alfred, Chief Architect and Originator of SugarStats).

N: Are you doing other things aside from this work in the HIT arena?

JMG: Wow. That’s a long list! Lol

1. Writing for HealthCentral.com on healthcare policy, especially as tech and web-based stuff relates to the millennial healthcare generation.


2. I’ve started up NextHealth.nl with a bunch of amazing folks here in Holland: Maarten den Braber, Martijn Hulst, Niels Schuddeboom, Jacqueline Fackeldey, and Jeroen Kuipers.


3. Writing business ideas left and right, manifestos and blog posts on how to improve healthcare NOW at Health Management Rx.


4. Traveling around to different healthcare events, meeting inspiring people and trying to bring empathy back into our global healthcare conversations.


5. And somewhere in there I’ll get a degree so I can teach perhaps, med students how to incorporate patients into the care spectrum as partners, but that’s farther off!

N: Thank you! I’m looking forward to continuing conversations together.

I know our community will want to know more about what’s happening with Health 2.0, your insights on it and about you. I know I do.

JMG: Nedrra, thank you so much. It is so cathartic to tell and difficult. I just hope more people who have been through the proverbial wringer come back and decide to change the system. Awesome!

To find out more about the Heatlh 2.0 conference being held at the San Francisco Marriot on October 22nd and 23rd, go to http://www.health2con.com/

For more of Jen McCabe Gorman’s views go to her blog at http://healthmgmtrx.blogspot.com, and http://www.health20.nl/ is a website related to Health 2.0 based in Europe and The Netherlands.