Teen crash survivor comes home
SEATTLE – A 17-year-old girl who survived in her car for eight days after it crashed down a ravine has returned home following a complex operation. Her doctors say she should make a full recovery within months.
“She is recovering much better than anyone expected,” said Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, a neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital in Seattle.
“She’s done beautifully. She’s going to lead a normal life.”
Laura Hatch crashed her Toyota Camry some 200 feet down a ravine after leaving a party Oct. 2 in the east Seattle suburb of Redmond, where her family lives.
For eight days, no one knew where she was. Relatives searched repeatedly. Sheriff’s deputies figured she was a runaway.
Finally, family friend Sha Nohr, guided by vivid dreams, drove with her own daughter to the area of the crash and spotted the car.
Hatch was in rough shape. Her right eye socket, cheekbone and nose had been crushed. She had a blood clot in her skull. She was horribly dehydrated.
Because of the clot, Ellenbogen and Dr. Joseph Gruss, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Children’s, were not able to operate until Nov. 2 – a month after the accident. Ideally, such operations are conducted within about a week.
The bones had already begun to heal by the time of the operation, so after peeling away her muscle and skin, Gruss re-created the fractures using chisels and saws.
He set the bones using tiny titanium screws, he told a news conference Monday.
The doctors also dealt with the blood clot and used bone from the outer layer of her skull to re-create her face. Once the bones heal, she’ll be able to do everything she’s done before, including playing soccer, they said.
Her father, Todd Hatch, said Monday she has no recollection of the accident or how it happened. She may have been drinking, he said, as there was underage drinking at the party, but “she seems incapable of telling me.”
Of the time she spent in the car, she remembers only praying and trying to break the window with her elbow, he said.
When she was rescued eight days later, she believed it was still the same day as the accident.
She doesn’t even remember the 10 days she spent at Harborview Medical Center before being transferred to Children’s, except for one instance of an IV being removed from her arm.
Since returning home Saturday, she’s been spending most of her time sleeping, talking with her twin sister and – like any teen concerned about her appearance – avoiding all but her closest friends, her father said.
“Right now, she feels like the daughter of Frankenstein,” he said.
Doctors have been assuring her that eventually she’ll recover.
“She’s as beautiful inside as she’s going to be outside,” Ellenbogen said.