GALVESTON — No one thought Kechi Okwuchi could have survived the fiery airplane crash in 2005 that left bodies strewn beside a runway in Nigeria. And few believed that Shriners Hospital for Children Galveston would survive in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
But both defied expectations.
The hospital’s reopening three months ago made a big difference for Okwuchi, who suffered burns over 65 percent of her body. If its doors had remained shut, as the Shriners national leadership had planned, she likely would have missed surgeries to help her live a normal life.
The hospital is at full capacity and is sending overflow burn patients to sister hospitals in Boston, Cincinnati and Sacramento, Calif.
“In very short order we were able to bring people back, and I was frankly amazed that people so grievously hurt by the shutdown that occurred after the hurricane came back to us,” said Dr. David Herndon, Shriners chief of staff who also heads the Blocker Burn Unit at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
A revolt by Shriners rank-and-file at the national convention in July overturned a decision by the combined boards of the International Shriners and Shriners Hospitals for Children to keep the hospital closed after the Sept. 13, 2008, storm.
“It was really amazing,” said Okwuchi, 20, about the the world-renowned burn center’s reopening. “I was the first patient treated after it opened.”
The Shriners burn center primarily serves burn victims from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mexico, but it accepts patients from all over the world like Okwuchi .
Okwuchi and 60 other students at the Loyola Jesuit College boarding school in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, boarded a Sosoliso Airlines flight home to Port Harcourt, Nigeria, for the Christmas holiday Dec. 10, 2005.
Everything appeared normal on Flight 1145 until it made its final approach. The Aviation Safety Network, an independent organization that focuses on airline safety issues, said the pilots decided too late to abort the landing after losing sight of the ground in a downpour.
Okwuchi recalled that the plane appeared to be descending too fast, and passengers began to panic.
“The last thing I remembered was a sharp, searing sound,” she said.
Crash recalled
Her mother, Ijeoma Okwuchi, 43, and other parents were waiting at the Port Harcourt airport for the students to arrive.
Parents saw emergency vehicles with lights flashing and followed them to the crash site.
“There were just bodies strewn as far as the eye could see,” said Ijeoma Okwuchi, who assumed her daughter was dead.
Then she got a call on her cell phone. “Your daughter is alive,” a hospital official told her.
One of the first officials to the crash site saw Kechi move and put her in an ambulance. At the hospital, she was able to give her mother’s name and cell phone number.
The first thing she remembers after the crash is feeling the pain from burns that covered 65 percent of her body. “It felt like my skin was going to explode,” she said.
Of the 61 students from her high school, she was the only survivor. Only two of the 107 passengers and crew survived.
Traveled to Galveston
She spent seven months at Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, before being returned to Shell Hospital in Port Harcourt. Kechi was horribly scarred and needed surgery that only Shriners Galveston could provide. Shell Hospital officials made the arrangements and mother and daughter moved to Galveston.
Since then, Kechi has undergone countless surgeries while attending Galveston’s Ball High School. Growing children need repeated surgeries to release inflexible scar tissue.
After Hurricane Ike, she and other Galveston patients were moved to Shriners Houston hospital. The surge in patients there made it difficult to schedule an operating room and surgeries became less frequent.
Regaining use of hand
Kechi turns 21 in October and becomes ineligible for the free care at Shriners. She has four major surgeries scheduled before then that she says would hot have been possible if Shriners Galveston had not reopened. Some of those surgeries will help her regain the use of her right hand.
Shriners Galveston Administrator John Swartwout Jr. said the financial problems that almost closed the Galveston hospital for good persist, but the hospital will not change its policy of never charging a parent or a child.
The stock market plunge shrank the organization’s trust fund from $8 billion to $5 billion last year, although it has since recovered slightly.
To make up for the lost funds, the Galveston hospital is expected to start accepting insurance and Medicaid payments in 2011.
Meanwhile the hospital is having to make do with about 200 employees, compared to 325 before Ike, and the second floor remains closed.