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Jackson Miracle Stories
Jackson Miracle Stories
Doug Allen
Two cardiac arrests left Florida Keys man almost paralyzed, saved at Ryder Trauma at Jackson South and Lynn Rehabilitation Center
Doug Allen, 69, loved playing music. When he was not performing at different gigs across the Florida Keys, he and his wife, Sheila Allen, lived a quiet life on the beach with their dog.
Shortly after returning from a walk with his dog, Allen started feeling pain in his chest.
As emergency medical services was transporting him to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson South, he suffered a cardiac arrest. Moments after arriving at Ryder Trauma, his heart started beating again. However, he suffered a second cardiac arrest.
Allen was diagnosed with an aortic dissection, a tear in the inner layer of the aorta – the main artery that delivers blood from the heart to the body. He was then rushed to the catheterization lab for an emergency stent insertion to repair the tear.
Because of the aortic dissection, Allen also suffered from a spinal stroke, causing him to lose all function in his spinal cord nerves, which led to the loss of feeling in his legs.
He was later transferred to Christine E. Lynn Rehabilitation Center for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at UHealth/Jackson Memorial.
While mobility was Allen’s biggest challenge, he drastically improved after just one week of physical and occupational therapy.
After two weeks of hard work, Allen progressed from walking short distances to tolerating longer distances with less assistance. He also reached a major milestone – just one day before discharge, he climbed up and down 22 steps – a task that was nearly impossible for him to do.
He’s grateful to the entire Jackson medical teams for saving his life, and giving him the chance to live it at its full potential.
“Everyone was so professional and inspiring,” Allen said. “They made you feel like you could talk to them and trust them – it was excellent care the entire time.”
Susan Aguirre and Aniah Carrazana
Susan Aguirre, 37, had one goal – to give her two-year-old daughter a sibling to grow up with. She was weary about getting pregnant again, but jumped into the process since her first pregnancy went so well. During her 10-week ultrasound, however, her joy quickly turned to worry.
Anna Sfakianaki, MD, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at The Women’s Hospital at Jackson Memorial, discovered a tumor growing on the baby’s spine. She suspected it could be spina bifida, a birth defect where the spine fails to develop properly. This meant Aguirre’s baby might be born with physical and intellectual disabilities.
After the discovery, she was referred to Rodrigo Ruano, MD, PhD, director of the UHealth Jackson Fetal Care Center and division chief of UHealth Jackson Maternal-Fetal Medicine, who ruled out spina bifida, but confirmed a rare tumor on the baby’s tailbone called a sacrococcygeal teratoma.
Dr. Ruano gave Aguirre and her family the option to do in utero surgery to remove the tumor, laser the vessel that was feeding the tumor in order to stop its growth, or closely monitor the fetal cardiac function with fetal echocardiograms (echo) and ultrasound exams. They decided to monitor the baby closely and plan a delivery via Cesarean section at 30 weeks.
At 28 weeks, the fetal echo showed the baby’s right heart ventricle was beating harder than the left ventricle. Dr. Ruano and the pediatric surgery and NICU teams decided to change the plan from elective C-section to ex-utero intrapartum treatment (EXIT) surgery in order to minimize potential trauma to the tumor.
On September 26, 2023, Anaiah Carrazana was born and safely transferred to the NICU without rupturing the tumor.
“Honestly, I feel like God did his work through Dr. Ruano. He was so amazing and not only was wonderful because he saved my baby’s life, but he also gave me confidence and comfort the entire way through,” Aguirre said.