Vanderbilt doctors save Nashville woman on Natchez Trace
Ruth Root was driving to a routine check up at her cardiologist Friday morning. She had been having heart problems since February, but something felt off as the Nashville woman drove down Natchez Trace near Blakemore Avenue.
"I drive myself to the doctor all the time, but I didn't realize something was really wrong until I got into the car," she said.
The 73-year-old grandmother tried to pull over — and that was the last thing she remembered.
Root was having a heart attack. She crashed her car into a light pole and suffered multiple bruises and cuts. According to doctors and nurses, she should have died right there.
But at that very intersection was Dr. Rick Miller, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University.
Miller sprang into action. Along with surgical resident Dr. Gretchen Edwards, and several other bystanders, Miller helped Root to a grassy knoll by the crash. She had no pulse, and her eyes had rolled into the back of her head. Miller's team began administering CPR. After using a cardiac defibrillator, Root began to show color and regain consciousness. Shortly after, she was taken to the trauma center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
"I think that if we weren't there right then and there you might not have survived," Miller would later tell her.
After the crash, Root suffered 12 cracked ribs from the CPR, bruises and a seat belt burn on the left side of her neck. With her cracked ribs, something as mundane as a cough sends pain shooting through her body. But she said the pain was insignificant compared to the alternative.
Sitting in her hospital room at Vanderbilt on Monday with her son, Sean Root, his wife, Larissa, and their daughter, Maggie, Root was able to meet Miller for the first time since he saved her life.
"Can I give you a hug?" Miller asked as he walked into the room.
"Oh you certainly may," Root said. "Just not a tight one."
Root thanked the doctor and was brought to tears when he recounted the rescue.
"God's not done with me yet," Root said. "I want to see this one (Maggie) grow up."
Maggie, who turns 12 in October, was at school during the crash. The night before, her father had taken her to the University of Tennessee football game, and they didn't get back until 2 a.m. Already in a little bit of a daze from her late night, she bolted awake when her parents told her about the accident. Maggie was terrified that she would lose her "Mauppie" as she calls her grandma. But now, almost three days later, with her grandmother well on the way to recovery, she couldn't be more thankful to her saviors.
"The day before when UT won, I thought that was a miracle, but this is a true miracle," she said after hugging her grandma. "I'm very thankful for her."
Reach Kirk A. Bado at kbado@tennessean.com and @kirk_bado.
