Wyoming woman thanks St. George caregivers for life-saving treatment
On April 21, 2023, Karen Conner, 58, from Lander, Wyoming took a simple walk with her husband and three dogs down a dirt road in La Verkin, Utah. She approached a cliff to investigate a foul smell, but everything after that is a blur.
She doesn’t remember tripping and falling more than 40 feet down the cliff, or the first responders arriving on scene. She barely remembers her husband kissing her on the forehead as Life Flight placed her in a helicopter en route to St. George Regional Hospital’s trauma center.
But Karen remembered the excellent care from Intermountain Health that kept her alive and she made sure the staff at St. George Regional knew that. Karen returned to St. George on August 15, 2024, to personally thank as many people as she could, validating the work of our caregivers.
Only a small rock and a bush on a ledge kept Karen from falling further below into the Virgin River on April 21. Her husband quickly called 9-1-1. A critical care nurse herself, Karen knew to stay still, despite the pain, to avoid further injury risk. “You don't want to move anyone's head because you just don't know,” she said. “My husband had a lot of OSHA training with his job, so he held my head so that I wasn't moving anything, just in case.”
Among the first responders on the scene of Karen’s fall was Rylee Olsen, Life Flight nurse. The Life Flight team transports critically ill or injured patients to the hospital, expediting travel time and essential minutes needed for proper care.
Rylee admitted Karen was in a dangerous and exposed area, but the Life Flight team comes prepared for any setting. “There's always the unknown when we go into a flight, but that's why we hire people with years of experience because they can pull from that knowledge in difficult situations” Rylee said. “Preparation and proactivity are way better than reactivity, so our goal is to be 5-10 steps ahead of where we're currently at, so we are prepared for the worst-case scenario before it ever gets to that and actively trying to prevent the worst-case scenario."
Washington County Search and Rescue used a basket and ropes to carefully carry Karen from the side of the cliff. They transferred care to the Life Flight team, working closely with them to get her to the hospital within minutes.
Karen’s spine and neck were broken in multiple places. She fractured several bones in her right leg and left ankle, as well as receiving a serious head injury, cuts and bruises. Her recovery would be long. But Karen’s nursing training kicked in to cope with the situation. “I knew things were not great, but it could have been worse,” she said. “In my head, I did what I've always done in critical care. I have to separate the person from what's wrong with them. Sometimes, we have to help people, we have to also cause some pain and discomfort. So, in my mind, I separated everything that I knew was wrong with me.”
Recommended by LinkedIn
Karen spent a week at St. George Regional, followed by stays at a skilled nursing facility and a physical therapy center in Phoenix. She eventually returned to Wyoming in July 2023, but her recovery has continued to this day with numerous surgeries and continuous physical therapy. Throughout this time, she didn’t have a proper moment to just thank the people who cared for her until August 15, when she drove from Wyoming to St. George Regional to meet her caregivers in-person. “It was important to me to thank them,” she said. “I wish I could have thanked every single person and not just the medical staff; even housekeeping and dietary. Everybody was helpful.”
Erin Remund, trauma injury prevention coordinator and part-time ER nurse, works at St. George Regional and has 15 years’ experience in emergency medicine. She helped organize the caregiver attendance for Karen’s visit when she and her team learned she was coming into town. As a nurse, this was important for Erin to make sure as many people could be there. “What I wanted was for these people who took care of her to be able to see that the work that you put in, the years that you put in, your efforts matter,” she said. “What they do on the day-to-day basis to be good caregivers makes a difference.”
Erin works with other regional hospitals and EMS agencies on trauma patient care training while engaging in community outreach to encourage safe habits in daily routines. She added ground-level falls are the number one mechanism of injury in Southern Utah and the St. George region, with high-level falls the 2nd leading cause of injury. When Erin met Karen in-person, she was amazed by her progress since her accident. “She had so many injuries. She had several fractures (spinal fractures, leg fracture), and that's not easy to heal from," she said. "You have to be non-weight bearing for a minimum of two months. That's two months of losing muscle mass. You're not moving normally, and then you have to rebuild your muscle and your ability to walk. The fact that she's up and moving almost to her normal routine 16 months out is amazing. She is doing incredibly well.”
Karen said it was overwhelming to see the turnout of caregivers on August 15. “They made a difference, not just in my life, but my family's lives, my friends’ lives, everybody I know," she said. "When you think about how many people were involved in this whole process, it's staggering.”
Karen knows many healthcare professionals aren’t looking for attention or glory, but it means the world when their patients show their appreciation. “When I worked at Dartmouth in the ICU, a woman I took care of came back a few months after she finally got out of the hospital,” Karen recalled. “She's like, ‘I wanted to say thank you for taking such good care of me and caring about me as a person when I was in the ICU’, and that has never left my mind. You don't know how you impact people and with that patient, it was a positive way. I wanted to express that to the care team I had that they impacted me in a positive way when I really needed to have positivity.”
Rylee wasn’t expecting Karen’s recognition, but she appreciated the moment. “It was wonderful to see the positive outcomes she's had and know that the training and energy spent we put into our careers pays off and benefits somebody in the long term like that,” she said.” That's the best thing to be able to see.” “They are not there for the recognition at all, but they deserve all the recognition in the world,” Erin said. “I can't speak highly enough about our ER team, our hospital staff, and our transport teams. We have the most amazing, compassionate caregivers who work incredibly hard, and they would never choose to put themselves on a pedestal, but they all came and showed up for that patient in her time of need.”
My new business! Nana Proofreading & Organizing LLC Virtual Administrative Consultant/Proofreader
3moLove this. So glad she recovered.