Recognizing Staff of Levine Children's Hospital
Floor Speech
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Mr. NORMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the 117th Congressional Record an example of service beyond the call of duty of two surgeons and an amazing team of nurses and staff working at the Levine Children's Hospital located in Charlotte, North Carolina.
On Sunday, August 22, 2021, while enjoying a relaxing day at our family farm, our 5-year-old grandson, Blair Beckham, got his hand entangled in the steel winch located at the front of a four-wheeler while attempting to pull a canoe out of a pond.
I was able to pull his hand out of the winch just before his entire arm would have been severed by the steel pulley, but not before his index finger was severed and attached only by a single artery and his middle finger remained attached, but all veins, bones, and joints were totally shattered.
I immediately wrapped his hand in a towel and drove to the emergency room at our local hospital, where he spent 3 hours before the ambulance transported him to Levine Children's Hospital located in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The ambulance arrived at the Levine Children's Hospital at 9 p.m., and it was there that Dr. Dan Lewis, a faculty member of OrthoCarolina and a member of the American Association of Hand Surgeons, and Dr. Keith Nord, who had instructed the staff at the emergency room at Piedmont Medical Center on the medical procedures to take while Blair was being transported to the Levine Children's Hospital and who was a specialist in hand surgery and serving a fellowship at the hospital, examined Blair and scheduled him immediately for emergency surgery that night.
The expedient and easy determination for these doctors to make would have been to amputate both fingers, as the loss of two fingers was not life-threatening and the surgery involved attaching the index finger, which was dangling by a lone vein, which was the size of one-fourth of the width of a human hair, and totally reconstructing the middle finger, which was completely shattered. The decision, however, was made to attempt to save the two fingers and to perform a surgery that lasted over 5 hours, beginning on a Sunday night at 11:30 p.m. and ending at 4:30 a.m.
Blair stayed in Levine Children's Hospital for 8 days, August 22 through August 29, where he had medical leech therapy, which is a rarely used treatment prescribed by Dr. Lewis that provided the necessary suction for obtaining adequate blood flow for the severed finger.
Dr. Lewis and Dr. Nord, along with the entire nursing staff, went above the call of duty to take part in a successful surgery lasting over 5 hours, until the middle of the night, in order that a 5-year-old boy could have a normal hand with all five fingers.
The 2 weeks of post-op care by Dr. Lewis and Dr. Nord was exceptional, and Blair now has the full use of the two once-damaged fingers on a fully functional hand.
The dedication and passion that Dr. Lewis and Dr. Nord demonstrated, along with the nurses and staff, where they were willing to sacrifice their time and use their medical talent to perform a surgery that had a minimal chance of success was a testament to the age-old statement ``service above self.''
Dr. Dan Lewis and Dr. Keith Nord are a living testimony of the Hippocratic oath, which they swore to uphold as medical professionals. As the ending statement reads, ``May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.''
May God bless those two doctors and nurses and staff that made this surgery a total success.
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