Miracle survivor leaves hospital after 4 months
Published: March 18, 2006
People call him a miracle.
A dump truck careened off an overpass and landed on top of Sidney “Sid” Levin’s Lexus as he zoomed along Interstate 25 in pursuit of a fresh batch of tuna salad from a delicatessen.
His Lexus was flattened. It took rescuers 45 minutes to get him out. His lungs were burned by the diesel fuel he inhaled. He suffered a fractured neck, five broken ribs, a busted collarbone and a concussion.
For a period of time, the 78-year-old wasn’t breathing.
But four months after entering Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, he walked out into fresh air Friday.
Yet Levin, an owner of Denver’s well-known and historic Buckhorn Exchange steakhouse and a real estate investor, seemed uncomfortable with the “miracle” label.
“I personally have a problem with the word,” said Levin at a hospital news conference. “I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Then he pondered the question a little more as reporters scribbled notes.
“Use whatever word you want. I think it was a miracle.”
Many factors - a wife who refused to let her husband of 54 years die, a tight family, a crack medical team, a devoted rabbi and numerous prayers - converged to save Levin.
His dry wit could be added to that list.
Levin is able to make wisecracks now about his ill-fated trip to the deli. He has no memory of the crash.
“The guy called. He wants to know where the hell I was. He wants me to pick (the tuna salad) up and pay for it.”
But this very same joker weeps as he listens to family members and doctors talk about his painful recovery. His wife, Renae, 75, rubs his back.
“What nobody can see is the mental beating that I’ve taken,” Levin said. “There were times when the pain in my body was horrific. I’d wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. in a strange hospital bed. A lot of bizarre things go through your mind.
“I was there - a bad, deep, dark, ugly, rotten, miserable place.”
He questioned the meaning of his life.
“People say God saves you. I find it hard to believe. Why would he save me while he was busy drowning 240,000 in a tsunami?”
Levin praised Dr. Sue Slone, a trauma surgeon, and the others who helped him at Swedish. He knows he wouldn’t be here, cracking jokes about chasing young women, if not for skilled physicians and technological advances.
Antonio Rodriguez Oronia, 55, of Denver, then a driver for S & S Trucking and Construction in Commerce City was cited for careless driving resulting in injury and other violations for the Nov. 6 crash on I-25 at the Belleview Avenue overpass.
Oronia’s arraignment has been continued to April 13 in Arapahoe County Court in Littleton.
Levin was in intensive care for 38 days. He spent time in a long-term care facility before his family convinced the insurance carrier to allow him to return to Swedish for rehab. He came down with pneumonia and his muscles and nerves began wasting away.
But Levin persevered, in part because his wife threatened to go “ballistic” if he died.
“Sid really never gave up,” said Dr. Elena Draznin, who oversaw his physical therapy.
Levin will have to live with a tracheotomy for at least a few more weeks because of problems swallowing. A medical aide will be at the family’s Greenwood Village home to assist Levin, who uses a walker.
Renae Levin acknowledged that “caregiver” is not a role that suits her.
“I’m an ornament. A decoration. A lover. We entertain each other.”
Levin will turn 79 in a few weeks. And he’ll be in the home he and his wife moved into in 1961. Their sweet, love-tinged bickering already has resumed.
“I take trips, he pays the bills,” an emotional Renae Levin said. “There’s a certain regimen we’ve worked out. I wasn’t about to have that changed.”
Levin joked that his wife just wants him around to take out the trash, but Renae Levin is quick in her reply:
“When’s the last time you took out the garbage?”
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