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'The doc put my head together'

It is a medical miracle, but of the kind orchestrated by a brilliant team. And doesn't Raj Kumar Gupta know it?

The cabbie from Queens, New York was resting at home on the morning of May 23. Just minutes earlier, the household had been through the regular bustle of getting six-year-old Rahul off to school. And then, with younger Kanika in tow, wife Rajni had left, taking the usual walk to school to drop off her son.

Raj Kumar's period of silence was shattered by a telephone call from his wife from the corner public call booth: Rahul had been badly hurt in a freak accident.

Rajni came home panicky, leaving the injured boy on the road. She returned with Raj Kumar to the corner of 247th Street and 91st Avenue to watch paramedics take the bloodied body of Rahul to the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, fortuitously only a few minutes away.

Two cars had collided in an accident and one had driven into a road sign, which fell on Rahul's head, slicing it in two. As Dr Steve Schneider, the paediatric neurosurgeon who pretty much put Rahul together again says, "It was an impressive cut... It began from the middle of the forehead and ran through to the top of the right ear... There was only a small amount attached to the bone."

Rahul's eyes, nose and mouth were no longer connected to the rest of his body. The skull and scalp had been sliced and the brain was exposed.

A neurosurgeon for 10 years, Dr Schneider admitted he had rarely seen anything so grotesque.

"It was jaw-dropping." he says "It looked like it was off the set of the Highlander television series or some such special effects." His light words belie the hard work he put in. For over six hours he, plastic surgeons, ophthalmologists and nurses put together Rahul's head. They almost lost the boy on the operating table but somehow kept him alive.

While the doctors pieced their son's head together, using fragments of bone to recreate a skull, the parents waited in suspense.

Rajni, who is from Nokedar village in Punjab, joined Raj Kumar, who came to the US 18 years ago from Chandigarh, just two years ago. Her inexperience had made her panic and lose precious minutes immediately after the accident. And the doctors had made no promises.

Dr Schnieder says he considered only two questions: Was the patient "salvageable" and could Rahul live a full life without turning into a "vegetable".

He says he is more pro-active when it comes to children because they had a "natural neuro-flexibility" and so decided to operate. The question he did not raise was whether the child was insured.

Raj Kumar says that though there was some partial insurance, it wouldn't have paid for Rahul's treatment. But he need not have worried; the hospital paid for it.

Dr Schnieder says the medical team began to entertain some hope about Rahul a few hours after surgery. The boy woke up and his CAT scan readings were positive. Still cautious, Dr Schnieder refused to commit himself till the next day, when he found that the only problem was poor vision.

Rahul woke up to find himself a celebrity. The local media turned up along with his friends and teachers. Now a film crew from Germany is shooting a clip for a program formatted like NBC's Dateline.

It's not surgery alone, says Dr Schenieder, it's the remarkable success of it that has drawn so much attention.

Rahul appears normal in almost every sense now and has now been declared fit to return to school in September, when he enters first grade.

Next: Down India Street

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