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"A moment of crisis with a lifelong impact": the testimony of a surgeon who treated the victims of Uvalde

2022-05-27T03:30:07.943Z


He treated the survivors of a shooting in 2017 and this week he had to face the horror for the second time. "I feel so bad for those families... We can be better," she says.


By Alicia Victoria Lozano -

NBC News

SAN ANTONIO — Sitting in a conference room away from the chaos of the University Hospital trauma unit, Dr. Ronald Stewart paused and closed his eyes several times Thursday before fighting back tears.

"I feel so bad for those families

," said the surgeon, "and guilty to some extent, that they don't have their children and I do."

Stewart, a senior trauma surgeon at University Hospital and the father of three adult children, was one of the doctors who treated victims of Tuesday's shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where an attacker fired a weapon of war, killing 19 children and two teachers.

Dr. Ronald Stewart, a trauma surgeon at University Hospital and chairman of the Department of Surgery at UT Health San Antonio Hospital in Texas.NBC News

From the moment four patients arrived, it was "time to act" at the hospital, said Stewart, who is also chairman of the department of surgery at UT Health San Antonio.

"We didn't know how many patients we were going to have," he said, calling the staff response a "human symphony."

[The killer entered the Texas school without resistance and began shooting.

The police took almost an hour to shoot him down]

The victims were also transferred to other hospitals, including the Brooke Army Medical Center on the outskirts of San Antonio, where dozens of first responders were mobilized to prepare operating rooms, blood banks and other services.

The coordinated response quickly turned into a region-wide relief effort that included mental health workers who were called in to comfort victims and their families.

The father of one of the girls killed in Texas is frustrated by access to guns in the US.

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"We are in a time of crisis that will have a lifelong impact,"

Stewart said, noting that survivors of trauma, especially when experienced in childhood, often suffer from chronic health problems as adults. This wasn't her first time treating victims of a shooting: That was in 2017, in the church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, that left 26 dead and nearly two dozen injured.

One of the lessons he learned from that tragedy was the need to transport the blood directly to the victims

, instead of waiting for them to arrive at the hospital to receive the transfusion.

That strategy was implemented on Tuesday, when the University Hospital and other medical facilities in the area mobilized to send the blood of the donors to Uvalde, Stewart explained.

[No, the Uvalde school killer was not an undocumented immigrant]

Since the 2017 shooting, Stewart has been dedicated to gun injury education and prevention, speaking at more than 100 conferences around the country and overseeing community education and engagement events.

Until this Thursday

there were still four Uvalde patients at the University Hospital

, three children and a 66-year-old woman.

The woman and a 10-year-old boy were in serious condition, and two boys ages 9 and 10 were in fair condition.

Stewart remained optimistic of his recovery.

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"The nonsense of this hurts me. We can be better, we must be better," he assured.

In the days since the Uvalde shooting,

his mind often wanders to the

bluebonnet

wildflower , which blooms throughout the Southwest: It appears in the most unlikely places, like cracks in sidewalks and along busy highways, where people might not think to find glimmers of hope.

“I try to find beauty in the world, and I think it is there if we look for it even in the midst of horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible pain and suffering,” he added.


Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2022-05-27

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