As HCMC faces closure, man crushed by tractor says he would not be alive without it
As the fate of HCMC remains in lawmakers' hands, one patient has decided to make his private story public.
Jerrad and Rebecca Moening, of Scott County, sat down to talk with WCCO inside HCMC, saying it was hard to be back.
"It's still a lot," Rebecca Moening
A giant life shift happened to the young parents last June.
"I can't even describe how traumatic this was. We were watching him and the parking brake slipped on his tractor, and just to see him be crushed," Rebecca Moening said. "As he's getting crushed, he moved himself with all his strength as he's getting crushed, and I am just in the car watching everything happen, screaming at him."
Two doctors happened to be near the accident in Scott County.
"They wanted to transfer him to a different hospital originally, but since those two doctors were there, they said 'No, he needs to go to HCMC.'" Rebecca Moening said.
Dr. David C. Templeman is an orthopedic surgeon at HCMC who cared for Jerrad Moening.
"He had a pelvic ring injury; he had broken his sacrum, which is a bone at the base of the spine. Then he had a hip fracture. That combination is close to rare; it's unusual," Templeman said. "Well, he obviously was in critical condition, so he had a breathing tube, he was on a ventilator."
Templeman, who specializes in pelvic reconstruction, and a team of nurses and therapists got right to work.
Another team tended to Jerrad's wife, who'd just had their second baby.
"The nurses would come with buckets of ice so I could keep my milk in there," Rebecca Moening said.
Jerrad Moening was not expected to make it through the first night.
Templeman now smiles when he thinks of the outcome.
"There's nothing like a really good patient to make the doctors look good," Templeman said.
"HCMC and the whole team who put me back together, plus a miracle, is the reason I am still here," Jerrad Moening said.
As for the hospital possibly closing, the Moenings say it makes them sad.
"We truly feel like if we hadn't been brought here and to a different hospital, the outcome may have been truly different," Jerrad Moening said.
Jerrad Moening reunited with some of the staff who cared for him, and he read a letter to them.
"I am a living testimony of these wonderful people at HCMC. They held my hand, cleaned me, monitored my every heartbeat. Where would I be without HCMC doctors, nurses, even the smiling faces of the cleaning staff that cleaned my rooms? Thank you all, couldn't have done it without you," his letter said.
