Doctor meets patient whose life he literally held in his hand
Published: February 5, 2006
A doctor who stitched up a hole in the heart of a stabbing victim’s heart reunited last week with the man, whom he says he never expected to live.
Dr. Andrew Brown and 20-year-old Tyray Tolbert reunited Friday in a conference room at St. Catherine Hospital.
As Tolbert listened to Brown describe how he put his finger inside the hole in his heart, he was nearly speechless, hanging his head at times.
“I just thank the doctors and the hospital a lot for saving my life,” he said.
Brown, a third-year attending physician, said he knew the case was desperate Jan. 22 when paramedics brought Tolbert to St. Catherine after he was stabbed in the heart, allegedly by his girlfriend.
With Tolbert’s blood pressure falling, Brown made an incision, spread Tolbert’s ribs and pulled his heart out of the chest cavity. There was a hole the size of a quarter in the rear of the man’s heart.
Brown said he had opened patient’s chests before, but it was generally a futile step.
“I remember thinking that one day it will work out. … I’ll make a difference in someone’s life,” Brown said.
Over the next hour, while emergency department staff awaited the surgeons’ arrival, Tolbert’s heart stopped at least three times. Each time, Brown, still holding the heart in his hand, would massage it to get it going again.
He soon realized that he needed to patch the hole, so he switched places with a nurse, who held the heart and plugged the hole with her finger as Brown stitched around it.
When he started losing hope, Brown said the nurses told him, “We made it this far, keep going.” He credits the entire 12-person staff for saving Tolbert, including the unit clerk who kept running back and forth to bring more and more bags of blood.
Tolbert received blood infusions totaling almost 16 pints - far more than the 10 pints of blood most people have in their bodies.
Dr. Cris Carlos, who also attended Friday’s reunion, worked another surgeon to repair Tolbert’s left ventricle and his lung. He said the majority of patients with injuries like Tolbert’s die.
After Brown took Tolbert to the room where his life slipped in and out of the doctor’s hands, the two parted ways with Brown wishing Tolbert well.
“Hopefully, we won’t see you around,” he said.
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