Knowledge, faith sustain family after accident
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. – There are things Travis and Lindsay Flanagan know, and there are things they believe.
They know, for instance, that Travis is lucky to be alive.
They know their combined medical training as certified registered nurse anesthetists helped them get through the March 13 farming accident that transformed their family’s lives forever.
But they believe that a series of coincidences, quirks of fate, and even divine intervention got them through it, too. “Every little miracle,” Lindsay will later say.
Those two – knowledge and faith – have been the twin north stars that have guided the Flanagan family into the unimaginable, and beyond.
The Saturday morning that changed everything for family
Travis knows he has to stop screaming.
The closest house to this cornfield is too far away – four football fields, he guesses – and even if it were closer, he wouldn’t be heard over the rumbling engine of the tractor that’s pinning him to the earth.
Beneath the hulking machine, he can see the mangled wreckage that used to be his legs.
Travis’ medical training tells him the screaming is likely causing his blood pressure to rise, that the bleeding will only get worse. The pain, though, has mercifully dissipated: Shock or adrenaline or both have sent waves of numbness through his body.
He dips his head down to rest on the metal hood of the tractor. He waits.
Meanwhile, at home in Binghamton, Lindsay watches over the couple’s two young children.
Soon, she’ll get the call from her sister-in-law. She’ll learn there’s been an accident at the Smithville Flats farm where her husband and father-in-law raise animals. That Travis was involved.
The rest of the details are sparse, but her professional critical care experience will fill in the blanks.
Travis and Lindsay’s combined medical knowledge will help them navigate the next 24 hours: the 20-minute heli
copter ride to the hospital, the trauma center evaluation, the multiple surgeries. They’ll divine clues about the future from status reports and familiar terminology:
Glasgow Coma Scale.
Vital signs.
Motor skills intact.
They don’t yet know all that lies ahead: a below-the-knee amputation of both of Travis’ legs, two weeks in Upstate Medical Hospital, hours of physical and occupational therapy.
They’ll also come to the realization that were it not for a twist of fate, a New York law restricting air ambulance services might have cost Travis his life. And they’ll set about trying to change that.
Couple shares dreams and works toward goals
Lindsay, 33, knows the lengths of her husband’s determination.
Back when they were dating and both working as nurses at a hospital, Lindsay had been impressed by Travis’ plan to go back to school and become a certified registered nurse anesthetist.
She watched as Travis built this new career, working overtime and picking up extra shifts, and his passion for it motivated her to follow in his footsteps. When Travis is inspired, his enthusiasm is infectious.
After some of the last vacations they’ve ever taken, a private breakfast proposal over strawberries and whipped cream-decorated “Marry Me” pancakes, and two months after the birth of the couple’s son, Dylan, Lindsay enrolled in CRNA school. She gave birth to their daughter, Maddie, a few months after graduating.
Dylan is now 4, and Maddie is 1. Travis, 36, is the kind of man who doesn’t stay still for long, Lindsay says. When he’s not working, he’s taking care of the animals on the farmland he shares with his father, baling hay, chopping grass and doing anything else that needs to be done. He’s working to build a barn on the 70 acres they own in Binghamton, a city tucked in the rolling hills of central New York.
Determination has woven their lives together since they were married in 2016. It’s what’s driven them to reach every goal they’ve set for themselves.
Still, none of that could have prepared the Flanagans for March 13.
Communicating love: You never know what’s going to happen
Travis knows not to leave the house without a kiss and a hug for Lindsay.
He never does; it’s a promise he made years ago. You never know what’s going to happen.
So at 5 a.m. on the Saturday that would change everything, Travis begins getting ready for a day on the farm. He makes a cup of coffee, grabs a banana and a granola bar (later today, on the way into the operating room, they’ll ask him when he last ate) and kisses Lindsay goodbye.
He heads to Smithville Flats in his 2002 Chevy Dually diesel truck to meet his father at the land they rent. They’ll mix feed for the goats, tag a few newborn calves and load hay for the cows.
Travis has grown up doing this work. Since he was 12, he has spent summers, weekends and hours after school working at his family’s dairy farm with his younger brother, Trevor. He’s logged so many hours performing these exact chores, the work has become intuitive.
On this Saturday in March, Travis sends his dad to work the other stretch of land they own, about five miles away.
Alone, Travis climbs aboard his tractor out there in the tangled web of cornstalks.
He turns on the engine, and the hulking metal machine roars to life.
Life changes in an instant as tractor pins driver alone in field
Looking back now, Travis believes the extra layer of clothes might have saved his life.
On this morning, he’s wearing coveralls, an additional layer he doesn’t usually put on, when he loses his footing while dislodging some cornstalks that have gotten stuck on one side of his tractor.
The machine snatches the coveralls and pulls his legs inside.
But the loose material also jams the mechanism, and the tractor stalls.
Travis can only guess how long he’s out there, partially pinned in the field in the near-freezing cold as the tractor’s engine groans above him.
When his dad returns, and they manage to call 911, Travis insists they’ll need a helicopter; an ambulance won’t be able to make it through the field.
Later, they will learn the New Yorkbased air ambulance that would have responded is already en route to another incident nearby. That due to a legislative barrier, the New York air ambulance would have had no blood on board. Travis needs blood, quickly. Luck? Fate? Divine intervention? A Guthrie Air ambulance out of Sayre, Pennsylvania, answers the call instead – and it brings with it a life-saving supply of blood that medics will transfuse to Travis, right there in the freezing field.
‘You didn’t ruin our lives, you just changed them,’ wife tells husband
Standing in their Binghamton driveway, Lindsay knows she can’t wait a second longer.
Her parents have arrived; her mother will watch the kids.
Lindsay climbs into the passenger seat of her father’s truck for what she’ll later remember as the longest 20-mile drive of her life.
When they get to Smithville Flats, and the truck has gone as far as it can down the road, Lindsay jumps out and starts running until she can see him.
Travis lies on the ground, his head supported on the thigh of a paramedic and a blanket across his body. From here, Lindsay can’t see how bad it is. But she can tell he’s awake – that’s enough.
The paramedic supporting Travis’ head asks to switch out and Lindsay swoops into the empty spot, letting her husband rest his head in her lap and squeezing his right hand, hard.
She asks him to wiggle his fingers. Somewhere in his mind, behind the sedative clouding his consciousness, Travis knows why.
These are the signs they’re trained to look for as medical professionals. A loss of motor skill function could hint at a spinal cord injury. Lindsay can’t see Travis’ lower body, but from the position he’s in, she knows his legs are in bad shape. She gently reaches her other hand down Travis’ back to check for signs of upper body injuries. Mercifully, there are none.
“I’m so sorry,” Travis says, “that I ruined our lives.”
“You did not ruin our lives, you just changed them,” Lindsay answers. “I don’t love you any different right now than I loved you this morning.”
Science, luck and miracles: Looking at what went right
They know medicine saved Travis. But the Flanagans believe, too, in the coincidences, the lucky breaks, the little miracles:
The coveralls he almost never wears, the ones that stopped the tractor’s blades from pulling him under any further.
The phone, which fell out of his coveralls pocket when the tractor got hold of him, that was somehow recovered intact despite the damage to its owner.
The volunteer fire department, the chief of which was Travis’ high school classmate, that happened to be holding a training session that day. They had extra staff on hand and were already at the firehouse when the call came in.
And chief among the miracle-making: that a helicopter from Pennsylvania, not New York, responded.
At the time, no one thought anything of it. The Flanagans didn’t know New York air ambulances aren’t permitted to carry and transfuse blood.
Today, Travis gets goosebumps thinking about it.
“Do I know definitely that if I hadn’t have gotten blood, whether I would be here or not?” he wonders aloud now. “I do not know that, but I do know that it improved my outcome.”
Lindsay doesn’t like to think about what could have happened if everything hadn’t fallen into place the way it did that day. She’s just grateful it did.
“We really feel like he had angels watching over him or something,” she says. “We couldn’t be more thankful for everything, every little miracle.”
Lobbying for bill for New York air ambulances to carry blood
“We really feel like he had angels watching over him or something. We couldn’t be more thankful for everything, every little miracle.”
Lindsay Flanagan On husband’s ordeal
In light of his accident, Travis’ family set up a Change.org petition to push forward a bill that would allow for New York air ambulances to carry blood products. More than 12,000 people signed it. Two months after Travis’ accident, the bill was passed in the New York State Assembly and Senate.
It’s why Travis wanted to share his story. “I want to draw attention to this as much as possible, because I think it’s a disservice to the New York state population and the members of the communities here to not have this as a possibility to save your life.”
The bill will next be delivered to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his signature.
What they know – and what they believe about their experience
There are things Travis and Lindsay Flanagan know, and there are things that they believe.
They know their lives changed March 13. Their formal dining room is now their master bedroom. There’s a ramp to their front door. Travis can’t go back to his job right now, and he fills his days with physical therapy and the chores he can manage from his wheelchair.
They know they’ve grown stronger as a couple and a family since the accident, and they hold tight to new milestone moments. Like when Dylan proudly pointed to “Daddy’s ouchies” in the hospital. When Travis finally had enough of not being able to give his kids a bath, and pulled himself up the stairs backward to get to the second-floor tub. When Maddie dragged a tiny chair beside Travis to watch him complete his physical therapy, while Dylan mimicked his movements beside him.
They know, too, that Travis has been measured for prosthetics, and recently he stood up in his first pair, supporting the weight of his body with his arms, his hands gripping parallel bars.
That’s one step closer to the Flanagans’ new goal: to see him walk unaided on new legs.
Travis and Lindsay’s third child is due in July, and when Travis meets their baby, they believe he’ll be standing on his own.
But either way, they know they’ll do it together.