Our family was involved in a 10-car pile up during one of those winter storms that affected the Midwest. We were stuck in the line of cars with a child whose leg was broken and severely mangled. It was 10 hours before he was finally at a trauma center and treated. Unfortunately, the leg couldn’t be saved and had to be amputated just below the knee. I guess I can’t help but wonder if there would have been any chance of saving that leg if we could have gotten him to the hospital sooner.

Many parents and patients play the coulda-woulda-shoulda game over and over after an event like this. If only I had … (you fill in the blank). I should have… I could have… It doesn’t change the final outcome but our human minds have a hard time accepting that and moving on. So we play that tape over and over, wondering what went wrong and how could it have been prevented. This is perfectly natural and maybe even a necessary part of processing the event in our minds.

But there comes a time even in the process of grieving the loss when acceptance is the next important step in moving on. There is a recent study that might help put some of this into perspective for you. It had to do with the timing of treatment for severe leg injuries like your son had. They found that patients who were able to make it to the trauma center within two hours of the injury had the lowest risk of infection (the major complication of concern after an injury of this type).

Anyone who went to a local hospital first and then had to be transferred to a trauma facility was at increased risk of infection. Anyone in either group (those who went to the trauma unit directly and those who were transported there after going to another clinic or hospital first) who didn’t get there in the first two hours had five times more infections than patients who arrived in the first two hours.

Clearly, it was not possible in your situation to get past that delay. Once the person is finally transported, the medical staff perform what’s called triage. They assess the patient’s condition and decide what has the highest priority. Sometimes, a crushed or mangled limb is ignored while the team tries to resuscitate the patient and save his or her life. There can be other medical emergencies such as blood loss, punctured lungs, severe burns, and so on that command attention even before a severely damaged leg gets the attention it needs and deserves.

It might be helpful if you sit down with the hospital social worker, case manager, or even the surgeon and review the sequence of events. Understanding what happened, how the timing affected decisions made, and all other factors that affected the final outcome may help you close this chapter of your lives.