Taren's Story

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Second Chance At Life

Taren Kinnel remembers driving out of his friend’s driveway on the motorcycle he had just finished fixing up. On the way home, he missed a turn and drove off the road into a tree. His next memory: waking up two weeks later at Miami Valley Hospital.

Taren had recently returned from military training in Louisiana and was reconnecting with his seven-year-old daughter. He arrived at Miami Valley Hospital’s Level I Trauma Center intubated, receiving blood, and in shock due to blood loss.

The trauma center team continued transfusing blood, and after ruling out any brain injury with a CT scan, took him to the operating room. There, the trauma team found blood accumulating behind the lining of his abdominal cavity. One of his kidneys, badly injured, was the major source of the bleeding, and had to be removed.

He had been losing so much blood that five times his body’s total blood volume had to be transfused. His extensive injuries, in addition to the kidney, included fractures of his right scapula, multiple pelvic vertebrae, and ribs, and multiple bowel injuries. He was put on continuous dialysis because he went into kidney failure.

On top of that, his lungs filled with fluid, which deprived his vital organs of oxygen. The trauma surgery team employed an advanced life support treatment to save Taren’s life—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) —which bypasses the heart and lungs to deliver oxygenated blood to the organs.

As his lungs recovered, Taren was gradually weaned from ECMO and transferred to a ventilator and supplemental oxygen. When he was fully transitioned to the ventilator, he was removed from ECMO. 
After spending 52 days at Miami Valley Hospital, Taren was discharged to the Rehabilitation Institute of Ohio for inpatient rehabilitation, and then to outpatient therapy.

“They gave me a second chance,” Taren says about his care. “My daughter is young, she’s only seven, but, you know, I have a chance to see her get married one day, see her graduate.”

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