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Steve Hood at his Union County farm, after surviving brain trauma

Highway Patrolman's Skull Bones Stored in Abdomen for Safekeeping

TUPELO—Veteran Mississippi Highway Patrolman Steve Hood's family knows how fast life can change from nearly perfect to dangerously critical.

In March, the 49-year-old Union County resident was driving a tractor with a front-end loader, pushing down trees to prepare his 60-acre property for a new fence so he could add more cattle. His wife, Lisa, was returning from a meeting at work when she got the call. The couple's 21-year-old son, Matthew, said part of a tree had fallen on Steve's head but amazingly didn't knock him off the tractor. When Steve regained consciousness, he didn't recognize his son, his speech was slurred, and he wouldn't climb off the tractor.

Lisa called 9-1-1 to dispatch an ambulance.

"I rushed home and waited at the house to direct the ambulance," she said. "Then I heard the patrolman radio to send the flight crew."

When Lisa saw Steve, she was surprised to learn there was no blood—only a cut. It didn't look like a serious injury, but "Steve didn't know any of us nor where he was," she recalled. "I knew there had to be bleeding underneath. We lifted Steve off the tractor on to the back board and into the bed of a pickup truck, where they started his IV."

Patrolman Ray Hall used his global positioning system (GPS) to direct North Mississippi Medical Center's CareFlight medical helicopter to land near them in the field.

By the time they landed at NMMC, a Level II trauma center, neurosurgeon Louis Rosa, MD, was waiting for them. Steve's computed tomography (CT) scan showed severe head trauma—bilateral subdural hematomas. The branch, which measured five to six inches wide and about seven feet long, had slammed against the right side of Steve's head, thrusting his brain to the left side of the skull, which controls the right side of the body, along with speech and memory.

"Dr. Rosa told me he would take Steve to surgery, remove bones from both sides of his skull to allow for swelling and tuck them in his abdomen to preserve them," said Lisa.

Even though this procedure has been performed for decades, Rosa said it has become increasingly more common lately. Surgery, he explained, is a last resort when other options—such as sedating the patient, giving high doses of certain medications, and using diuretics to draw fluid off the brain—fail to relieve pressure on the brain.

"When a patient develops high pressure in the head that is unresponsive to medical management, this is the thing to do to give the brain more room," explained Rosa. "We remove the skull, which is about the size of a small saucer, and place it in the abdomen. This provides a living environment to keep the skull healthy. After all the swelling goes down and everything is okay, we replace it."

After leaving the CCU, Steve spent several days in the hospital's stroke step-down unit, which meant the family could spend more time with him.

"Steve was very restless," recalled Lisa. "He couldn't speak and he wasn't swallowing correctly. He walked the halls constantly, confused and trying to find his way out of the hospital."

Because his swallowing was impaired, he had to be fed through a tube in his abdomen. Once able, he was transferred to Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson for intense physical, occupational, speech-language and recreation therapy. His 19-year-old twin daughters did another sort of therapy with him too—sending text messages to their dad and eagerly awaiting his reply.

"Steve was slowly regaining his memory, but he still didn't remember anything about the accident. Then one day, it's like someone flipped a light switch," said Lisa. "He realized that something had happened to him and he was prepared with a list of questions when we arrived to see him. He also questioned the bulge in his abdomen, which the doctor explained were the skull bones being kept there until the swelling in his brain subsided."

After he was discharged home, Steve continued speech therapy briefly at NMMC's Outpatient Rehabilitation Center and continued to surprise everyone with his progress. On April 24, Rosa scheduled surgery to remove the skull bones from Steve's abdomen and replace them where they belong.

"It was amazing," said Lisa. "Steve was weak, but his memory is great."

Tags:

Brain trauma, Jackson Mississippi, Louis Rosa, Methodist Rehabilitation Center, neurosurgery, North Mississippi Medical Center

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