What do you say to the people who saved your life?
George Washington University Hospital reunited trauma patients with the medical staff who had a hand in nursing them back to health. It was the hospital’s 15th Trauma Survivors Day.
“I just want to say thank you,” said Tymiek Kidwell, one of the patients treated at the hospital’s trauma center.
Gregory Thomas was on his way to work in December 2026 when a wrong-way driver hit his car head-on. The other driver died.and the crash left Thomas with devastating injuries.
“Lacerations from the seatbelt ripped my insides out, broke my ankle, broke my leg, broke my knee, broke my arm in half, broke my ribs, so I had internal bleeding,” Thomas, who is still on the road to recovery, said.
Lea Etzl was hit by a truck while pushing her four-month-old baby in a stroller. She pushed it away and took the brunt of the impact, sustaining severe brain injuries. Through it all, her husband Matt and her unharmed little ones were by her side.
“It was hard, it was a hard journey, but it was good that they took care of me. They fixed my brain,” Etzl said.
“She was in inpatient rehab up until March; she’s still doing rehab, but to see her now with her two beautiful kids, and getting to be a mom again, is one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in my life,” her husband, Matt Etzl, said.
Dr. Babak Sarani, emergency medicine chief at the hospital’s Center for Trauma and Critical Care, said she still gets emotional when it is time to deliver her speech on Trauma Survivors Day.
“I write the script myself every year, I practice it every year, I get up here and I get choked up because the stories are just so incredibly moving,” Dr. Sarani said. “We do it every year, about a week or two before thanksgiving as a means to give thanks, that’s why we always choose this time of the year, it’s meant to raise the morale of the hospital as a whole.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Much, much, much thanks,” said Michael Willingham Jr., who survived after being hit by a truck. “People came out of the woodworks while I was in the hospital, even after, even right now, for me to be able to stay in my place still, that’s because people helped.”
