A
5200 Harry Hines Blvd.
,
Dallas
,
TX
75235
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- Main Retail Café: Mon - Sun | 6:30 a.m. - 7 p.m.
- Starbucks Café: WISH Building | Mon - Fri | 5:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
- Park Market Café: Mon - Fri | 6:30 a.m. - 7 p.m. | 8 p.m. - 4 a.m. | Sat -Sun | 7 p.m. - 4 a.m.
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- Monday - Friday: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
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- Monday - Friday: 8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
- Monday - Friday: 7 a.m. – 7 p.m.
- Monday - Friday: 6 a.m. - 11 p.m.
- Saturday: 8 a.m. – 7 p.m. Sunday: Closed
- Holiday hours may be different
Posted: 5/17/2017
National Trauma Survivor’s Day is May 18
Dec. 6, 2013 is not a day Lauren Barnard will soon forget.
On a rare Texas snow day off from school, the then 16-year old Lauren and her younger brother headed out for a few hours of fun sledding with her family. The winter wonderland quickly became a nightmare when Lauren plummeted off a ravine near the cul-de-sac of her Flower Mound home.
Lauren’s injuries were so severe she was taken to the Rees-Jones Trauma Center at Parkland Memorial Hospital where trauma surgeon Alex Eastman, MD, was on call. In critical condition with multiple internal injuries, Lauren was taken to the operating room for an emergency splenectomy.
“For a young woman who loves to waterski with her family, it might seem like the end of the world to have her abdomen cut open,” said Dr. Eastman, Medical Director and Chief of the Rees-Jones Trauma Center at Parkland and assistant professor, Division of Burns, Trauma and Critical Care at UT Southwestern Medical Center. “But she handled it with grace and true grit.”
In recognition of National Trauma Survivor’s Day May 18, Lauren talked about the accident and her grueling road to recovery.
“I had a lot of internal injuries and I lost about half of my pancreas, they removed my spleen and during surgery, my lungs collapsed so I ended up with a chest tube and a feeding tube,” Lauren said. “I was hospitalized for a couple of weeks and was able to go home for Christimas, but I ended up getting sick and had to go back.”
Hospitalized for a total of nearly a month, Lauren underwent physical therapy to help her relearn simple actions like swallowing and taking deep breaths. Along with breathing, therapists also helped her with speech.
Thanks to her Parkland physicians and therapists, Lauren, now 20, has made a full recovery and is a student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock with plans to become a physician assistant.
“I’m really hoping we can convince her to go to medical school,” Dr. Eastman said. “She’d be an awesome doctor.”
Hearing Dr. Eastman’s comments, Lauren laughed, “I know … he’s always telling me that! Before the accident I wanted to be a marine biologist, but because of the care I received at Parkland, my plans changed,” she said, noting that she would like to continue her education at UT Southwestern.
Seeing how far Lauren has come since that fateful day has been gratifying for Dr. Eastman.
“She’s continued to keep in touch and I have really enjoyed watching her grow,” he said. “Too often we don’t get long-term follow-up on our patients. This has been really rewarding.”
For more information on services available at Parkland, please visit www.parklandhospital.com