It took nearly dying for Christian Gould to decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
“I’m going to become an RN and then a nurse anesthetist,” said Gould, 21. “I want to do more for the world than just make money.”
Gould, a Wellington High School graduate, came to that realization after a horrific single-vehicle crash on Nov. 22 that left him broken and mangled. The Honda Civic that Gould was driving along Crestwood Boulevard in Royal Palm Beach hit three oak trees and went airborne twice before gouging itself into the ground. He was not wearing a seat belt.
Gould’s injuries — which included bleeding on the brain, a broken jaw and a compound fracture of the femur — are too long to list.
“On paper, Christian shouldn’t have survived,” said Dawn Thompson, administrative director for emergency and trauma services at St. Mary’s Medical Center.
Gould not only survived but he’s thrived.
Accompanied by his mother, he was back Wednesday at St. Mary’s, where he spent eight and a half weeks — including 16 days in a medically induced coma. The Goulds were among former patients and their families at the hospital to celebrate National Trauma Awareness Month and thank doctors, nurses and support staff for their efforts.
“They were phenomenal,” said Laura Gould-White, Christian’s mother. “What they did for Christian was nothing short of a miracle.”
The night of the crash, Christian attended a party at a friend’s house. Rushing to get home, he appears to have lost control on a rain-slicked patch of road, drove onto the median and pinballed his car off a series of trees.
Beyond the broken bones and massive blood loss, Gould underwent multiple surgeries. A doctor told Gould-White that her son might never emerge from his coma and that long-term neurological problems were a possibility.
But almost seven months after the crash, the only thing that hints of Gould being a trauma survivor is the cane he uses to get around. He plans to enroll in college and said he’s excited about becoming a health care provider.
Prior to the crash, Gould was working three part-time jobs — teller at a Bank of America branch, sales clerk at Nordstrom’s in the Mall at Wellington Green and sales clerk at an Advance Auto Parts store — but had dropped out of Palm Beach State College and did not have specific plans for his future.
“I definitely feel lucky to be alive,” said Gould, who continues his recovery at his mother’s home in Raleigh, N.C. “I got a second chance at life.”
Thompson calls Gould a “starlet” in the eyes of the trauma staff at St. Mary’s.
“Oftentimes when you work in the trauma service, you don’t often get to see the last chapter of a story,” Thompson said. “You don’t get to see that there was a happy ending. To see what meaning this has given to Christian’s life, it helps to reaffirm our belief in what we do.”
On Monday, National Trauma Awareness Month was celebrated at Delray Medical Center.
Among the speakers was Miami attorney Robert Dolinsky, who was nearly killed on a night in September 2013 when a pickup truck struck him on Atlantic Avenue while he walked to dinner with friends over the Intracoastal bridge.
Nearly 30 surgeries later, Dolinsky recovered, then created a nonprofit organization — “Live then Give” — that teams up a survivor of severe trauma with someone who has just been through a life-threatening accident.
“The only thing missing from my recovery,” Dolinsky said, “was meeting a person who went through the hell that I went through and still believe in heaven.”
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